


Shadows Falling

by cordeliadelayne



Series: Man-Made [5]
Category: Primeval, Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Future Predators, Gen, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 16:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6476821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forced to split up in order to deal with a series of anomalies at home and abroad, the ARC team soon find themselves facing their toughest challenge yet – one that will send shockwaves through time and across continents, and will ultimately threaten their very existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2010. 
> 
> With thanks to red_2 for help with Russian naming conventions.

**Anomalous Analysis Unit – Russia**

“I hope you called me down here for a good reason, Dima. My wife is making a special dinner. And you know how she gets if I'm not at home when I say I will be.”

“Yes, yes,” Dmitry replied, waving his hand. “Believe me, Tolya, this you want to see.”

Anatoly Nikolaevich Kuznetsov sincerely doubted that. There wasn't much of anything in the AAU that he wanted to see. Not these days. The whole place gave him a bad feeling. He was reminded of the tale of The One-Eyed Likho his grandmother was so fond of telling him. Two young men go searching for evil; one ends up losing his life, the other is forced to cut off his own hand in order to save himself. His grandmother had thought that transferring to Moscow was looking for evil and would only lead to disaster. And now, since transferring from there to the AAU in the middle of the godforsaken countryside, Anatoly was inclined to agree with her. No good could come from interfering with the future. There was a very good reason why the locals had christened the Unit Likho's Lair, and it had nothing to do with their ferocious commanding officer.

He shook his head, eyes darting around the starkly lit corridors as they headed away from the administration offices towards the laboratories. They passed the door to the first of the armouries and Anatoly was reminded of the stack of letters he'd had to send out to grieving loved ones this past week alone. The further down in the steel monstrosity's depths you went, the less likely you were to come out again.

“Which level are we going to, Dima?” Anatoly asked.

“The basement, of course,” Dmitry replied as they stepped inside the lift.

“Of course,” Anatoly said. “Where else?”

**The Anomaly Research Centre – England**

“How's it coming, Connor?” Nick Cutter asked. He stepped up to the Anomaly Detector Device and cast a curious gaze over the new screens that were flickering with data too fast for the human eye to process. “Are we ready for that second field test?”

Connor nodded distractedly, not turning around from the wires he was busy soldering together.

Cutter sighed and gently patted Connor on the shoulder before leaving him to it and heading towards the kitchen. The Locking Device's first test run had not gone exactly to plan and Abby was now sporting a rather fetching pink cast on her broken right arm. Abby had insisted that it was her own fault for getting too close to the Brontosaurus in the first place but Connor had been on a constant diet of self-recrimination and cold coffee ever since, trying to improve his design and work out what went wrong the first time. Cutter knew it wasn't healthy and that at some point he would be forced to stage an intervention, but even if he got Becker to frog march Connor out of the building, he knew Connor would just find a way to work on the ADD anyway. Better that he be here where Lorraine could try and ply him with food and browbeat him into sleeping than at the flat he and Abby shared, casting Abby guilty looks and getting under her feet in his desire to help.

“How's he holding up?” Stephen asked, passing Cutter the coffee he'd just made and making himself another.

Cutter shook his head and sat down at one of the tables. “He's still glued to the ADD _and_ reconfiguring the scanning data _and_ working on the Locking Device, all at the same time.”

Stephen sighed and sat down opposite Cutter. “You know he's going to start making mistakes, and then blaming himself for that and before you know it he's fallen apart. We need to get him away from that thing for a while.”

Cutter nodded. “I know, I know. But...”

“You don't want to be the one to do it?” Stephen guessed. Cutter's rueful look was answer enough. “Okay, well, I guess I'm used to being the bad-guy, I'll go do it.”

Cutter flushed guiltily. “I can't ask you to do that...”

“You didn't,” Stephen replied, standing up. “I'm just as concerned about him as you are. And if a little strong-arming is what's going to make him see sense, so be it.”

Stephen took a final sip of his coffee and then headed out of the room. Cutter watched him go with a heavy heart. As team leader this should be his responsibility but Stephen was right, he couldn't force himself to be the one to make Connor stop. And it wasn't as if they weren't all grateful for Connor's focus. There had been a terrifying moment when the Brontosaurus charged that they had all thought that Abby was dead; Cutter could well understand Connor's need to make sure something like that never happened again.

But still, he knew it was incredibly selfish of him and he would have to find a way to pay Stephen back; it _wasn't_ fair to leave all the tough decisions to him – putting that sort of expectation on the younger man had contributed to enough problems.

“We do seem to be a maudlin bunch today.”

Cutter looked up in surprise to see Jenny standing before him. She was wearing her hair in a low-slung ponytail that cascaded over her right shoulder and hardly any make-up. She'd never looked more like Claudia Brown.

“Oh?” Cutter said, swallowing hard.

Jenny sat down in the chair Stephen had vacated. “Connor's permanently attached to the ADD, I just passed Stephen and he looks like he's got the worst job in the world,” Cutter winced but if Jenny noticed she didn't comment, “Abby's fed-up at not being able to use her arm, Lester's either talking to himself or having an extremely frustrating phone call in his office, and you're in here, looking as if you lost a pound and found a penny.”

Cutter smiled. “I haven't heard that one in a while.”

Jenny reached over and patted his hand. “Connor's going to be fine. So is Abby.”

Cutter looked down at Jenny's hand and then over at her, not quite meeting her eye.

“But that's not what's bothering you, is it?” Jenny guessed.

“No. Not entirely.”

When he didn't elaborate Jenny gave an exaggerated sigh. “If you don't tell me, I can't help.”

“Aye. I know.” He looked over at Jenny properly then and turned his hand so their palms were touching. “I'll tell you. Just, not right now.”

Jenny stared at him, trying to work out just how sincere Cutter was. She shook her head. “Very well. You know where to find me.” Then she gently extracted her hand from his and walked out, leaving him with only his thoughts for company.

**An Abandoned Warehouse – The Midlands**

“Are you sure this is the place?”

“For the last time, _yes._ ”

The two men got out of their vehicle and surveyed the area. There didn't seem to be much there - just a large warehouse in the distance surrounded by fields and a rather incongruous high-tech security fence, for somewhere so far out in the middle of nowhere.

But this is where their GPS had led them and their paper map confirmed it. This was where they'd been instructed to take their cargo, whatever the hell it was.

“Says here we're to unload by the gate and then buzz 'em. Does that sound right to you?” The elder of the pair asked.

“Beats me, Charlie. Nothing about this sounds right.” He stared down at his manifest listing and then back at the warehouse. “But orders is orders.”

Charlie nodded. “Whatever you say, boss.”

They moved to the back of the van and started to unlock it and lower the ramp when a sound from inside startled them.

“What the hell was that?” Charlie asked. His companion just shook his head, warily staring into the darkness of the truck.

“I thought the company had a no livestock policy.”

“It does.”

They started to slowly step backwards as the ramp was fully lowered. Charlie reached for his radio but he didn't have the chance to call anyone, the bullet to the head put paid to that. His companion suffered the same fate, seconds later.

**Thames House, MI5 Headquarters – London**

“And how goes the ARC job?” Harry Pearce asked Lucas North as they sat in the conference room. Their latest case had just wrapped up and they were taking a moment to regroup before moving on to the next crisis.

Lucas shrugged. “Okay. They haven't really needed me much – Becker's been mainly liaising with Tariq about new security systems.”

Harry nodded. “And you're okay with that?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“No reason.” Harry smiled and Lucas wondered exactly what it was the other man was thinking. Then Harry leaned forward, serious expression on his face. “Lester wants you to give a briefing in the morning.”

“A briefing? On what?”

Harry pushed across a manilla file he'd been anxiously tapping his fingers against. “That.”

Lucas curiously opened the file and started to read, aware that Harry's gaze never left him. After a few minutes Lucas closed the file and turned to stare at Harry.

“How sure are we of the intelligence?”

“We lost two agents getting that information out of Russia. I'd say we're very sure.”

Lucas inwardly groaned. In his experience, nothing good ever came out of Russia.

**5,000 Years In The Future**

The creatures lumbered slowly towards the spinning light. It wasn't the first one they'd ever seen, but it was certainly the brightest. Their Alpha had left them with strict instructions not to go through it so they did nothing but stare, eyes drawn to it in a way that none of them could explain.

“Hey!” a voice shouted from their right. “Get away from that!”

The creatures bowed their heads and did as they were told, casting baleful glances at the shining light as they wandered off in the opposite direction.

“They're getting more curious, aren't they?”

“Their Alpha seems to have them in hand,” the woman who had shouted at the creatures replied. “And they won't be around for much longer anyway.”

“We're moving on to the next phase so quickly? Is that wise?”

The woman cast her companion a severe look. “We're only progressing so well because of your input, Helen. Now really isn't the time to have doubts.”

“No,” Helen replied. “I suppose it isn't. Thank you, Dr Banyon. As usual you've been a big help.”

Dr Banyon smiled. “If only all your sister clones took direction so well.” She looked over to the side, where three other Helen Cutters were seated around a table, apparently arguing over a bowl of fruit. They were the least successful of Dr Banyon's experiments. But the Helen clone she was talking to was definitely the best of the bunch. Clones with sentience, an ability to truly choose and make decisions for themselves, that was an accomplishment that Banyon just knew was going to lead to a Nobel Prize. The future predator research was just an amusing diversion.

“Are we going ahead with Phase II then?”

“Oh yes,” Banyon replied, turning to look out over the devastated landscape. The clone followed her gaze, taking in the mountains around the Institute, the desert landscape that she had learned had once been the Atlantic Ocean. “Phase II is already well under way.”


	2. Chapter 2

**The Atrium - The ARC**

“Connor?” Stephen asked. He slowly stepped up to where Connor was sitting, making enough noise so that he wouldn’t startle the younger man. “Connor?”

Reluctantly Connor swivelled around in his chair. He had dark bags under his eyes and enough stubble on his face that it was obvious he hadn't shaved in a couple of days. Stephen tried to keep his expression neutral. 

“I'm not stopping,” Connor said. 

Stephen huffed. “Connor, please. You'll do yourself no favours if you carry on like this.” Stephen knelt down so he and Connor could look eye to eye. “Abby is fine. It wasn't your fault. You couldn’t have possibly known...”

“If the Locking Device had worked then Abby wouldn’t have been hurt in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, life doesn’t work like that. Especially not ours.” Stephen stood up. “And if you don't come home with me, I'm going to tie you to that chair and wheel you out.”

Connor's eyes narrowed. “You wouldn't.”

Stephen just put his hands on his hips and raised an eyebrow. Connor held his gaze for a moment and then sagged. 

“All right. Fine. I'll take a break. Let me just get this diagnostic running...Hang on, home with you?”

Stephen nodded. “I'm going to cook you a decent meal and you can use my shower.” He nodded to a bag Connor hadn't noticed by the exit. “I picked up your spare set of clothes from your locker, so we're good to go.”

“How did you know my combination?”

Stephen smiled. “The date of the original US premiere of A New Hope wasn't that hard to figure out.”

Connor's eyes widened and Stephen laughed. 

“Okay, Abby told me.”

Connor smiled a little and nodded. Then he turned around and started furiously typing. Stephen stayed standing behind him, watching curiously and letting him know that he wasn't just going to disappear. Maybe if he could get Connor to explain exactly what he was doing it would distract the other man from the blame game; he knew how that could go. 

None of them blamed him for the accident, certainly not Abby. She'd tried numerous times to get him to leave but he'd kept brushing her off until she'd given up. The last time Stephen saw her she was going to show Sarah the animal pens. 

“Okay, all done,” Connor said. A series of diagrams flashed up on the screen and then numbers flashed over them. 

“Good,” Stephen said, not having the faintest idea what Connor had just done. “Let's head out.”

Connor got up slowly, his bones creaking with the effort. He hobbled slowly to the exit and picked up his bag before Stephen could. Stephen just shook his head. A noise above him made him stop and he looked up to see Lester staring down at him. A curt nod and then Lester was moving back to his office. Stephen smiled to himself. How he'd ever thought that Lester didn't care about the team, he'd never know. 

“Are you coming?” Connor asked from the doorway. 

“Yes, yes, let's go,” Stephen replied. He patted Connor on the shoulder and they walked out of the door together. A change of scene right now was what they both needed.

**Warehouse – The Midlands**

“This is definitely it?”

“Yes, ma'am. Coordinates match what we've been given.”

“All right. Cunningham, Singh, get rid of the bodies. Ibsen, you and Attwell get the equipment. I want that generator up and running as soon as possible. Collins, you're with me.”

The group of mercenaries all nodded at their commanding officer and got to work. She didn't even spare them a glance, certain that her orders would be followed, and headed over to the wire fence. Moving as agilely as a cat she climbed up and over it, landing on all fours on the other side. Collins dropped down next to her. 

“You know what our orders are?” she asked Collins. 

“Yes, ma'am. Get the generator into the warehouse. Use it to open an anomaly. Go through. Make a recce and contain the area.”

She looked over at him, quietly assessing. “And do you always follow orders, Collins?”

“ I - “ He paused. There was a glint in her eyes that Collins knew all too well. It meant that all hell was about to be set loose. He started to grin. He never did like a quiet life. “That depends.”

“I was rather hoping you would say that.” Then she moved her gun and shot him in the centre of his forehead. “No hard feelings,” she said to his dead body, “but I have a point to make.”

**The Animal Pens – The ARC**

“And this is a sabretooth,” Abby was saying. “We didn't have time to get it back home before the anomaly closed.” Abby went up to the cage the creature was lying down in and then looked back over her shoulder at Sarah, who seemed frozen in place by the door. “He won't bite, you know.” Her mouth curved into a grin. “Much.”

Sarah smiled humourlessly back. “I'm just supposed to take your word for it, am I?”

Abby nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”

Tentatively Sarah moved forward until she was in front of the sabretooth’s cage, but still slightly behind Abby. 

“What are you going to do with it?”

Abby shrugged. “We're just looking after it till we can get it back home, really. We tried researching its habits but creatures like this,” she pointed over to it, her voice cracking slightly, “they're not supposed to be caged up. It isn't fair. But we don't have a choice – and in the end we're protecting it just as much as protecting ourselves from him.” She knelt down so she could get a closer look at the creature's face; the creature stared back at her impassively. It was a far different encounter than the last one she'd had with one of these animals. 

“And there's no way of telling when an anomaly to the sabretooth’s time might reopen?”

“None.” Abby stood up. “Connor's been tracking all the places where anomalies have opened before, making sure that we're alerted the minute one reopens. But so far the only constant has been the anomaly at the Forest of Dean.”

“Where this all began?” Sarah asked. 

“Yeah....It's funny, looking back. We never thought we'd end up in a place like the ARC. Or that we'd still have no more clue now as to how to stop them than we did then.” Abby winced and tried to unsuccessfully scratch at her plastered arm. “We might be better funded but I'm not sure that means better prepared.”

Sarah tried to nod sympathetically. She was still a little unsure of her place at the ARC – Cutter had just given her an office and a stack of papers and told her to see what she could make of it. So far, not much. 

“I suppose I should go up and see if Connor needs anything,” Abby finally said with a sigh. 

“No need,” Jenny interrupted. She entered the room, casting a suspicious eye at the sabretooth and pulling on her jacket. “Stephen's taken him home.”

Abby smiled. “Oh, good. They could probably both do with the company.”

“Is Stephen still - “ Sarah paused, not quite sure how to finish the sentence. 

“I think he has everything under control for the moment,” Jenny replied. “At least he's actually keeping me informed, which is all that I ask.”

Sarah nodded, recognising a future instruction when she heard one. She couldn’t imagine ever being able to keep a secret from Jenny. 

“And, it's time we all called it a night. Lester's arranged for Lucas North to give us a briefing at 8am.”

“Lucas?” Sarah asked, interest perking up considerably. “What kind of briefing?”

Jenny smiled. “No idea. But it can't be good. Which is why I thought pizza and wine at my place was in order.”

“Count me in,” Abby said. 

“Ditto for me,” Sarah responded. 

“Excellent. Girls night in it is then.”

**The AAU – Russia**

The journey down to the basement seemed to be interminable but in fact, as Anatoly was more than well aware, the journey took exactly 86 seconds. More than enough time to question, once again, why he had decided to join this Unit. 

Of course, as with every time he asked that question, he came up with the same answer. Because Professor Gregory Ivanov was the most brilliant Russian scientist that the world had never heard of. 

The doors opened silently and Anatoly reluctantly followed Dmitry through three further checkpoints – blood samples and retina scans being undertaken at each one - until they entered the Kill Zone. Of course, it's actual designation was Zone One, but no one ever called it that, except when the Professor was making his rounds.

“Are you ever going to tell me what it is that I'm going to see, Dima? Your theatrics don't work on me.”

Dmitry cast a hurt look back at his colleague. “I do not engage in cheap parlour tricks.” He paused before placing his chin in the slot by the wall so that his retina could be scanned. “And this is something that you need to see for yourself.” He motioned impatiently for Anatoly to take up position at the other side of the door. Entry to the Kill Zone could only be accomplished by retina scans performed simultaneously on a select few of the authorised personnel. 

“Very well. But this better be worth it.” 

Anatoly tried not to flinch as his retina was scanned. Even though he knew perfectly well that he couldn't feel anything on his eye, it always left him with the vague feeling that his eyeball was going to fall out at any moment. 

“Oh, this is definitely worth it.”

Anatoly glanced over at Dmitry. He really didn’t like the tone in his voice. 

“Dima – this isn't something you've done, is it?”

Dmitry glared at him. “Of course not. What do you take me for?”

Anatoly raised an eyebrow but remained silent. 

Dmitry huffed to himself. “Come this way, please.”

Anatoly shook his head and followed. This too always gave him the creeps. What only a few people knew was that the retina scans were not to open the door, but to allow the hologram of the door to move from being solid to insubstantial, allowing them to pass through. It was just another piece of technology the AAU Team had purloined from the future and while Anatoly admitted it had its uses, it was still disturbing. 

Of course, that wasn't the only thing. He came to an abrupt halt and openly stared at the man standing inside the Quarantine Forcefield in the front area of the hangar-like Laboratory. He was tall and thin, with dark brown hair and shockingly blue eyes. And part of his face, from the right side of his forehead down to his neck was a light blueish grey. Anatoly looked over at some of the Test Subjects held in their own Quarantine fields, and then back at this man. 

“Yes,” the man said, “I am part Echolocator.”

“Echo -?” Anatoly asked, taking a tentative step forward. He was very aware that Dmitry and all the guards were closely watching him. 

“Echolocator.” The man smiled. “That's what we call them. I believe you know them as future predators.” 

“We call them test subjects. It's the Others that call them future predators.”

“Ah,” the man said, looking disinterestedly around the room, “my mistake.” 

Anatoly looked over at Dmitry but he could see that he wasn't about to get any help from that quarter. 

“So,” Anatoly began, “perhaps we could start with who you are?”

“Oh, an easy question to begin, perfect,” the man replied with a grin. “My name's Hart. Stephen Hart.”


	3. Chapter 3

**The ARC**

Sarah tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle her yawn. She, Abby and Jenny hadn't gone to bed till the early hours of the morning, spending the entire night drinking (though they switched from wine to water after two bottles), eating (greasy pizza followed by copious amounts of chips) and talking (mostly about the men in their lives, the state of the world today, and whether the ARC project was worth sacrificing their meagre social lives for). Sarah hadn't had so much fun in years, but she was certainly paying the price today. 

Danny, who was sitting across the table from her, pushed over a glass of water and a box of paracetamol. “You look like you could do with this.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, not sure whether that was an insult or not. She took the water but ignored the pills. “I don't have a hangover. I'm just tired.”

“Ah, yes, exactly what I want to hear at the beginning of a meeting,” Lester drawled. Sarah flinched; she hadn't heard him enter. Or Lucas North, who was staring at her with that alarming smirk of his that she never knew whether to take seriously or not. 

But before Sarah had the chance to apologise the rest of the team began filing in, taking up their usual seats around the conference table. The main meeting room was a new addition to the ARC, but one that Lester had deemed necessary considering the expanding nature of the team. 

Lucas remained standing and started handing out pieces of paper. Lester sank back into his chair and watched. Clearly Lucas was to take the lead from the start today. 

“What are these?” Cutter asked. 

“Lorraine, if you would?” Lucas said instead. Lorraine, Lester's ever efficient personal assistant, moved to the back of the room and turned on the projector, which she adjusted until a clear picture appeared on the opposite wall – the same as the photos Lucas had handed out. The others all squinted. As far as they could tell it was a satellite photo of an uninspiring looking piece of land. 

“This is a photo of a patch of land in Russia. Basically in the middle of nowhere. The only way to access it is through one arterial road, or from the air. This photo was taken last week.” Lucas nodded at Lorraine and the picture behind him changed. “This is that same patch of land 72 hours ago.” Now, instead of a deserted stretch of land, there were clearly several dozen buildings of various sizes, along with all manner of trucks and obvious signs of technology.

“I don't quite see - “ Cutter began. 

“And this is that same area, taken this morning.”

The team frowned as they examined the picture. 

“Are you sure that's right?” Danny asked.

Lucas shot him a withering look. “Absolutely.”

“But – it's just like the first picture,” Connor said. “There's nothing there.”

“Not quite,” Lucas replied. “Lorraine, if you would.”

Lorraine nodded and after only a moment the photo zoomed to six times its original size. Now they could clearly see something glinting, in the exact middle of where the main building had been. 

Stephen leaned forward, knowing exactly where this was going, but not able to stop himself from asking anyway. “Is that an anomaly?”

Lucas nodded. “So it would appear. But just to make sure we repositioned one of our satellite’s over the area – a tricky undertaking at the best of times. This is what's there now.”

A series of sharp clicks at a computer keyboard and Lorraine had a live feed projected on to the wall. The buildings were there, and then they weren't, solid one moment and then insubstantial the next, until the feed dissolved into static. 

“That looks like magnetic interference,” Connor mused, “but no anomaly is that powerful.”

“Well clearly something is going on,” Lester replied, “and seeing as the official channels don't appear to be open, and taking into account what we've been led to believe about Russian interests in the anomalies, I'm sending a team to investigate.”

“To _Russia?_ ” Jenny asked. “Isn't that a little dangerous?”

Lester raised an eyebrow. “As opposed to rampaging dinosaurs?”

“I mean - “ But Jenny didn't get the chance to clarify. 

“I'll be going with you,” Lucas said. “I have experience in Russia and I speak the language fluently.”

“Cool,” said Connor. “When did you learn that?”

“While I was being tortured in a Russian prison.”

Connor started to laugh and then realised that Lucas was deadly serious. His face did a comical u-turn but Becker saved him from having to make some sort of apology. 

“So who exactly is going?”

Lester cast an eye around the room, though they all knew perfectly well that he had already made up his mind. “Cutter, Stephen, Connor, and Becker. Along with Mr North here that should be plenty.”

Danny, Jenny and Abby all started to make objections, only halted by Lester's imperious holding up of his hand. He turned first to Danny. “You're more use here in case an anomaly opens, as I've no doubt it will.” Then he turned to Abby. “And as useful as I'm sure you'd be you don't get that cast off for another two days.” Abby glared at him but didn't respond – much as she hated to admit it, he probably had a point. And if an anomaly _did_ open she could hardly leave Danny and Sarah alone to deal with it. 

Then Lester turned to Jenny but before he could give his no doubt well-reasoned argument for why she had to stay behind, Jenny crossed her arms. 

“I'm going. And that's that,” she told him. “Can you imagine the chaos Cutter is going to cause in Russia? We'll be at war in no time.”

“Now just a minute - “ Cutter began, glaring over at Stephen who was doing nothing to contain his quiet laughter. 

“Very well,” Lester sighed. “If you insist. Just don't cause a diplomatic incident. Or get yourselves killed. I've got enough paperwork to deal with as it is.” 

“So Mission Infiltrate Russia is a go?” Connor asked, looking more animated than he had in quite some time. 

Lester sighed. “So it would seem.”

**Warehouse – The Midlands**

“Do we have a problem here?” 

“No, ma'am,” Singh said, looking down at Collins' body. They all knew why they were there, because of the outrageous money they'd been promised for what seemed like a perfectly cushy job; it certainly wasn't Afghanistan. And it wasn't as if any of them held any loyalty to the others. Which had been exactly one of the points she'd been trying to make. 

“Excellent. Let's get moving.” She easily slung a large backpack over her shoulder, containing part of the operating controls for the generator. The men under her temporary command did the same – it would take exactly five people to operate the equipment and if they all wanted their reward, which she was certain they did, there wasn't any chance of someone pulling the same stunt on her. 

At least not until later; but she'd worry about that then.

They hurried as one across the scraggy land, senses on the alert. But just as they'd been told to expect, aside from the fence there wasn't any other kind of security evident. The whole area looked deserted, as far as the eye could see, except for the warehouse standing ominously before them.

With their weapons drawn they slunk closer to the main entrance of the warehouse. 

“Walters,” Singh whispered, “do you know what's in there?”

Walters looked over at him and shrugged. “Does it matter?” she asked. 

Singh shook his head. “I suppose not. It's just...”

But whatever it was he never got the chance to say. An ominous roar from right next to the door had the mercenary team moving as one to raise their weapons, fanning out behind Walters. 

“What in God's name was that?” Cunningham hissed. Walters shook her head. As far as she knew, there weren't supposed to be any living creatures inside. 

“Well I suppose there's only one way to find out.” She took a deep breath and then moved over to the electronic panel on the door. She turned back to look at her team, all braced for the worst. “On three. One...two...three...” She hit the open door button and took a stance to the side, her eyes alert to anything that might come through the doors as they slowly drew up from the floor. 

“I knew I should have stayed in bed this morning,” Cunningham muttered under his breath. 

They were the last words he ever spoke. 

**5,000 years in the future**

Dr Banyon was sitting at her desk, her fingers dancing over the computer console built into it. Phase II of the project was going even better than she had imagined it would. Strange, how she owed so much to Helen Cutter, a woman she wouldn't have given a second glance to if she hadn't had something she'd wanted. She looked up at the safe securely hidden behind a holographic projection next to the door. Soon it would be time to show the world exactly what she was holding there. But not quite yet. 

She returned to her work, monitoring the output from the Main Anomaly. The readings showed that the anomaly's strength was still within acceptable parameters. 

A knock at the door interrupted her and she silently cursed. She really wasn't in the mood for conversation right now. 

“I'm busy!” she called out. 

“You always are,” her husband replied, entering the room in a slow gait, his footsteps aided by a metal walking stick. “And you never remember to eat.” 

One of the least successful Helen clones came up behind him and placed a warm plate of food on the corner of Banyon's desk before leaving as silently as she had arrived. 

“Derek, I don't...”

“I know. You don't have time. Certainly not for an old man falling apart at the seams.” Banyon didn't interrupt and Derek nodded, slowly turning around. “Eat. Don't eat. It makes no odds to me. I just feel better knowing that I did my bit.” 

Dr Banyon anxiously pursed her lips. But she wouldn’t say anything; Derek's attempts at emotional blackmail had fallen on deaf ears long ago. Besides, she was partly doing this for him, and as soon as they started on Phase III she'd tell him everything. Then he'd see. 

Still, she allowed a few morsels of potato salad to pass her lips before returning to work. 

**The AAU – Russia**

Anatoly turned to stare at Dmitry who only stared back. “I told you it was good,” Dmitry replied, grin impossibly smug. Just this once, Anatoly might actually forgive him. 

“There is a Stephen Hart working on a similar project in England,” Anatoly said, words slow and deliberate, his accent more pronounced. 

The man before him smiled. “I rather thought there might be.” He looked around at the Quarantine Field he was being kept in. “I don't suppose we could do this somewhere more conducive? Like somewhere with a chair?”

Anatoly's back stiffened. “No, I do not think so.” He and Stephen locked gazes for a moment, and then finally Stephen nodded. 

“Okay,” he said, “if that's the way you want to play it.” He took a deep breath, his grin spreading even wider. “Take me to your leader.”

Anatoly glanced at Dmitry who merely shrugged. “That will not be possible. You can conduct all your communication with me.”

“No, sorry, that's not going to work. I need to talk to the big cheese. You know, someone who actually knows what's going on.”

Anatoly smiled darkly. “In that case, you definitely want to talk to me.” Stephen raised an eyebrow at him and he continued to explain, “I am the Chief Scientist at the facility.”

“So you're responsible for all this?” Stephen waved his arm at the future predators. There were five of them clearly visible in this section. All sedated, all with various limbs missing, clinically cut away so that the scientific team could further study them. 

“In part,” Anatoly replied. Truth be told he wasn't keen on that side of the project. He hadn't been when he joined and he certainly wasn't any more. There was something distasteful in the entire enterprise. He was a scientist, not a torturer. He wanted to learn about these amazing creatures, about how they had evolved and what this meant for the evolution of humanity, but seeing what bits of them could be used in medicines and sold to the Chinese on the black market, that is not what he went to university for. 

“So you don’t totally approve?” Stephen guessed. Anatoly didn't respond. “I don't blame you. This,” he gestured angrily again at the room around them, “this isn't science. This is _barbaric.”_ Stephen’s face twisted in disgust and Anatoly couldn't blame him. But he had a job to do, and this stranger was jeopardising all of that. 

“How did you get here?” Anatoly asked. 

Stephen shrugged. “How do you think?”

“Through one of the anomalous lights?”

“Anomalous lights – that's what you call them?” Anatoly nodded. “Huh. We call them anomalies. Same difference I suppose. But yes, that's how I came here.”

“Why _are_ you here?” Dmitry asked, stepping closer to Stephen's Quarantine Field. Anatoly watched him warily, aware that at any moment things could rapidly spiral out of control. 

“That rather depends on you,” Stephen replied. “I may be here to help.” He shrugged. “Or I might be here to kill you all. Your choice.”


	4. Chapter 4

**The Armoury - The ARC**

“I can't believe we're going to Russia. _Russia!_ ” Connor was bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet as Stephen and Becker started going through their equipment, attempting to decide what they could take with them considering they had no idea what they were about to face. 

Stephen smiled over at Connor. “Yeah. Remember the good old days, when the furthest we had to travel for an anomaly was a couple of hours?”

Connor grinned. “Yeah. Who'd have thought...” He gazed wistfully at the weapon's lining the walls. “It's a lot different now, isn’t it?”

“You can say that again,” Abby replied, coming up behind them. “How are you doing?”

Becker shrugged. “Hard to plan for an event that we have no data on.” He sighed and looked around the room. “I think our best bet is to take as much containing equipment as possible, and limit hard weapons to a few key personnel.” As he said this he looked pointedly at Stephen, who nodded seriously. “I don't want to get caught inside Russia with an arsenal if I can help it.”

“Even if you're up against future predators?” Abby asked. Connor looked at her in surprise but she just stared at him. “I don't want anything to happen to you. To any of you,” she amended quickly. “And the predators,” she shuddered, “they're in a league of their own.”

“We won't be completely unarmed,” Becker said, “but we're not going to be just up against creatures from the anomalies, but the Russian military. And I don't imagine they take guarding a supposed secret base all that lightly.” He put down the rifle he was examining and sat down on one of the half-packed boxes. “Much as I hate to say it, talking our way in may be a better option. Force certainly isn't going to be it, not if there's such a small team of us going. And a fire fight isn't going to be in anybody's interests.”

“I suppose not,” Abby replied. She trusted Becker to do what was right to protect the team. She just wished that she was in a fit enough state to go with them, but until she got her cast off she was supposed to be relegated to working at the ARC. 

“We'll be fine, Abby, don't worry,” Stephen told her. “And we'll have Lucas with us. I'm sure he knows the best ways in and out of the country.”

“Yeah,” Connor mused. “Do you think, I mean, what he said about being tortured...”

“I think we should wait till he's ready to tell us about it himself,” Stephen interrupted firmly. Connor glanced at him quickly and then nodded. 

“I'm going to get some of the equipment from the science labs,” Connor said after a moment of strained silence. 

“I'll help,” Abby replied. 

When they were out of earshot Stephen turned to Becker. “Do you really think we're ready for something like this?”

Becker looked around at the equipment he'd been sorting through, running through the list in his head of the preparations that still needed acting upon and nodded. “I think we'll do the best that we can. But Lester's right, official channels won't help us here.” He paused, wondering how much of the intelligence that he'd received he should share with the others. He didn't think it was right to keep them in the dark. Stephen, Connor and Jenny deserved to know the whole truth as much as he did and now would be the perfect time to let Stephen know of the private briefing he and Lester had had last night. But before he could make a decision, one of his soldiers came in, asking if they needed any help, and the moment was gone. 

**The AAU – Russia**

“What do you think?” Dmitry asked. He and Anatoly had moved away to one of the observation rooms – six rooms dotted around the main area of the Kill Zone filled with computers and recording equipment, and a small cache of weapons should the need arise. What only Anatoly knew was that the air conditioning units also all had a separate filter for poison gas, should it prove necessary.

Right now he cast it a wary glance before closing the door behind him. The guards outside continued to point their guns at this Stephen Hart, who kept on standing, straight backed, as if having guns pointed at him was just part of his daily routine. Who knew, perhaps for him it really was. 

“I think we're over our heads, is what I think.”

“Oh, come now, Tolya, surely not for a man of your talents.”

Anatoly shot him the dirtiest look he could manage. “We have no idea what this Stephen Hart wants and he's making threats. He could be dangerous.”

Dmitry looked out of the window and smiled at Stephen who merely smiled back. “He doesn't look very dangerous to me.”

Anatoly frowned. “Don't take this the wrong way old friend, but you are hardly known for your good judgement.”

Dmitry's smile grew, revealing his yellowed teeth. “If you're that concerned, you could take him to the Professor.”

Anatoly shook his head. “No, that would be even worse.” 

“Then what do you suggest we do?”

Anatoly sighed. “I suppose I should take him to one of the Interview rooms.” He glanced at the guards. “I don't want to be overheard any more than necessary.”

“Paranoia?”

“Realism,” Anatoly replied. “Walls have ears in this building. You'd do well to remember that.”

Dmitry shrugged. “The nature of the beast, my friend, that is all.”

Anatoly nodded. “Will you see to the transfer? I need to tell my wife I won't be home for dinner.”

Dmitry, currently seeing future wife no. 5, laughed out loud. “Don't let her browbeat you too much. These women, they like the `bad man'.” He was still laughing as he left the room, and made a comment to one of the younger guards who gave a quick grin before returning to solemn. The other Stephen Hart caught Anatoly's eye but Anatoly turned his back on them and picked up the phone on the desk. As surreptitiously as he could he removed the bug from inside it and dialled a number that he had only recently memorised. He didn't have very long – he wasn't naive enough to think that that was the only bug in the room, but perhaps he'd have time to get his message out. 

“Yes?” a clipped English voice asked him. He hesitated, it had been a while since his studies in Oxford, but he'd been practising his English in recent months, watching old movies and digging out some of his old books, telling his wife they were a legacy for their sons. She hadn't even thought to question it. 

“Hello,” he began, “my name is Dr Anatoly Kuznetsov and I need to speak to James Lester on an urgent matter.” He frowned as the woman attempted to brush him off. “No, miss, you don't understand. I'm very much afraid that the survival of the human race is in jeopardy...Why I am calling is only a matter of interest for Mr Lester...Tell him...tell him I know what really happened to the British government.”

The silence on the other end was almost deafening. 

Then the AAU's anomalous light alarm went off. And the phone disconnected.

**Warehouse – The Midlands**

Walters ran as fast as she could, Cunningham's screams still in her ears. This is not what she had signed up for, yet she wasn't about to let her men come to harm. She chanced a quick glance behind her shoulder and saw Singh attempting to dodge the rampaging creature behind them. 

“What the hell is that thing?” Singh gasped as he and Walters became level. 

“If I didn't know better,” she panted, “I'd say it was a dinosaur.”

Singh nodded, chest burning from the exertion. He had no idea what had happened to the others, but if it was anything like what had happened to Cunningham, he was very glad he hadn't seen it. He was unlikely to get a decent night's sleep ever again as it was. 

But there was no time to think what the creature chasing them was, he could only spare the energy to concentrate on not getting impaled by the creatures horns. 

A simple mission, he'd been told, weapons only issued as a precaution, though he hadn't objected to the two delivering drivers being shot, poor schmucks who'd only been doing their job. 

Of course he could say the same, couldn’t he? That he'd just been doing his job. And four people were dead. He wasn't like the others, ruthless above all else. He'd only got in the mercenary game by mistake, a misunderstanding about the appropriation of Iraqi gold.

Well, not exactly a misunderstanding, but no one had been hurt by the scheme, no one had _died._

“On my mark we turn and shoot,” Walters commanded, her surprisingly calm voice cutting through his thoughts. 

“We what?” Singh asked, but ultimately she was used to giving orders and he to obeying them, so he just nodded and braced himself. 

“Mark.”

They turned as one, their guns still gripped tightly in their hands. The creature was enormous, a thick sturdy body, a large frill and three menacing looking horns and on its forehead, looking strangely out of place, was some sort of antenna device. 

Singh pulled the trigger on his gun a fraction of a second after Walters did on hers, their bullets staccatoing against the creatures chest. It wasn't slowing down, wasn't doing anything but charging, right at them. Across open land with nowhere for them to hide. 

For the first time in a long time, Singh prayed. 

**5,000 years in the future**

One of the Helen Cutter's was sitting in a containment cell, her legs crossed before her. She was staring dumbly at her surroundings – the grey walls, the red laser bars, the bowl of water on the floor. 

The Administration Clerk was filling in a form on her data pad, processing the Helen Cutter's appearance – height, weight, distinguishing features (each clone had a different tattoo on their right temple to set them apart) – and was ready to record any noises she might make. Though the containment fields electronic recording devices would pick up any such noise just as easily, they'd discovered that the human ear was able to process its meaning a lot faster than a computer's processor.

The Clerk frowned. She didn't know why this woman out of all the billions on earth had been plucked from the past to be cloned. It wasn't as if she'd invented the technology – that had been down to Dr Samson who's statue had once stood outside this very building until it had eroded into dust. She had asked Dr Banyon about it, but her only reply had been that Helen Cutter's appearance would be all the more surprising. 

The Clerk couldn't see why. The Helen Cutter clone didn't look particularly striking, except for the severe hair cut and alarming amount of cleavage on show she seemed perfectly ordinary. 

The red light on the Comm Unit blinked and she answered it as cheerfully as she could. 

“Hello, you've reached Containment Unit 91. Deborah speaking.” She smiled, recognising her friend's voice, and spent a quick five minutes arranging a lunch date before swiftly hanging up. Strictly speaking personal calls were forbidden, but who would know?

She picked her data pad back up and turned towards the Containment Cell. Her jaw dropped and the data pad slid from her fingers to come crashing on to the floor. There'd been no sound, no alarm triggered, but all the same she was now facing an empty Cell. 

The clone had gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**The ARC**

Stephen finished helping Becker select the last of the supplies and then went off in search of Cutter. Something had been bothering the older man for the last few days and Stephen was determined to find out what that was. Before he could track Cutter down however, Stephen was waylaid by Dr Jin, the ARC's newly appointed resident psychologist. 

“Ah, Stephen,” Dr Jin said. He stood directly in Stephen's path, smiling serenely. A small man due to a hunched back which left him barely as tall as Abby, he pushed his glasses back up his nose and blinked rapidly. 

Stephen bit back his annoyance and attempted to smile. “Dr Jin.” He paused, hoping Jin would give some indication of what he wanted, but of course he didn't. “I don't know if you've heard, but we're shipping out in an hour.” Another uncomfortable pause. “To Russia.”

“Yes, I had heard.” Jin smiled. “And you think you're ready for that?”

“Yes.” Stephen knew he was now glaring at the other man but he couldn't seem to help it. Dr Jin had that effect on him. 

“Okay. You have my details if you need to contact me urgently.” Jin then turned around and headed back in the direction of his office. 

Stephen watched his progress with a bemused smile on his face. As usual he had no idea where he stood with the psychologist. He did feel like seeing him was helping, even if he had to mentally brace himself for hours before their appointments. And he had to admit, even if only to himself, that after the initial discomfort it was good to share his fears with someone outside of the team itself. But the man was very hard to read. Though Stephen supposed that as long as the doctor kept signing him off as fit for the field there really wasn't anything to worry about. 

He shook his head, deciding that he had more pressing matters to attend to and was about to restart his search for Cutter when the alarm for the Anomaly Detector went off, startling him. A door down the corridor opened and Danny Quinn came barrelling out and rushed past Stephen, broad grin on his face. 

Stephen shook his head. Despite himself he liked the ex-policeman, and even found his enthusiasm infectious, but his gung-ho attitude could do more harm than good if they weren't careful. And he knew the price of such recklessness first hand. 

Sarah Page hurried towards Stephen. “What's happening?” she asked, a little breathlessly. 

“No idea,” Stephen replied. “Let's find out.”

They entered the atrium together to find Danny, Connor and Lester already standing by the Detector.

“Well?” Lester asked. 

“Looks like its opened in the Midlands,” Connor said. “Hang on.” His fingers flew over the keys. “Yeah, middle of a field in Nottinghamshire.”

Lester nodded. “Let's hope there are no prying eyes nearby then. Right,” he turned to Danny. “You're in charge, god help us. Take Sarah and a team of soldiers and find out if anything came through.”

“Right you are, guv,” Danny said. 

“How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?”

Danny just shrugged and winked at Sarah, who rolled her eyes. 

“What about me?” Abby asked. She'd appeared in the doorway behind them, her footsteps only noticed by Stephen. 

Lester spun on his heels to face her. “You have your arm...” He trailed off. Abby's cast was gone. Lester raised his eyebrows. 

“I asked Dr Evans to take it off. It's practically healed. And I want to help.” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. It wasn't as if she hadn't thought about making the same gesture in the meeting earlier – Connor, Stephen, Cutter and Jenny, even Becker, were her team, her _friends_ and the thought of not going with them had been gnawing at her, but Danny and Sarah were her team too and they had hardly any experience out in the field. 

“It's okay,” Stephen said, rightly guessing at her conflicted feelings, “you're right. Danny and Sarah will need your skills. As long as the arm really is okay.”

“It's as good as new,” Abby assured them. “Honestly. I have a doctor's note and everything.”

“Then what are you still standing around here for?” Lester asked. “Chop chop.”

“Chop chop?” Sarah mouthed at Stephen. Stephen smiled and shrugged. 

Abby went over to Connor. “You look after yourself, okay? Don't do anything too heroic.”

Connor gave a lopsided grin. “Who, me?”

Abby leaned forward and gave Connor a peck on the cheek before turning around and hurrying after Danny and Sarah. 

“I'm going to be an old man before you two get your act together, aren't I?” Stephen asked. 

Connor didn't reply. Instead he just stared after Abby's retreating back, a wistful look on his face. 

**The AAU – Russia**

Anatoly cursed and slammed the phone down. That may well have been his one and only chance to make contact with the Others. Damn the anomalous events and damn the AAU. 

“Where is it?” he snarled as Dmitry came through the door. There were still lives in danger and a team would need to be sent out. Anomalous events were still areas that he was in charge of, for the moment at least. 

Dmitry opened and closed his mouth and pointed behind himself. But there had been no need. Anatoly could see the twinkling reflections of the anomalous light, a dangerous beauty floating in mid-air. Right in the middle of the Kill Zone. 

The only area on the planet where that was supposed to be impossible. 

**The M1**

“This is fun, isn't it?” Danny asked. He was driving one of the ARC's fleet of Jeeps, speeding up the M1 towards Nottingham. 

“Oh yes,” Sarah replied. “Us girls together.”

Danny laughed and then zigzagged around a coach full of holidaymakers. Sarah, sitting next to Danny, grabbed the dashboard. In the back Abby was trying to keep her injured arm out of harm's way. She might have convinced the doctor to remove her cast but that didn't mean it was 100% yet. 

“You all right back there?” Danny asked. 

“I'm fine, Danny, really.” She paused and turned to stare out of the window, as the scenery zipped by. “I'm just worried about the others.”

“At least they haven't got the Keystone Cops looking after them.” Danny indicated the soldiers in the van behind them, just about keeping up with Danny's version of driving. 

“They're not that bad,” Sarah said. 

“That's just 'cause you fancy the blond one.”

“I do not!” Sarah objected, carefully not turning around to look at Abby. Just because she may have confided in the girls that she quite liked the look of blond Patrick Donovan, didn't mean she wanted Danny to know. He could be infuriating at the best of times. 

Danny just shook his head and turned back to focusing on the road. Abby and Sarah withdrew to their own thoughts, perfectly aware that without any witnesses to what had come through the anomaly, they had no idea what danger they were about to face. 

**Warehouse – The Midlands**

The creature lunged and Singh rolled, knocking into Walters as he did so. She gave a short yelp, the sound of cracking bone setting Singh's teeth on edge, but he couldn't worry about that now. He chanced a glance up as he rolled into a standing position, gun gripped tightly in his hand. But the creature just kept on running, little droplets of blood flying out from its body, but apparently not doing enough damage to slow it down. 

Singh sank to his knees, breathing deeply. He was trying not to let himself think what was staring him in the face. That he'd just had a close encounter with a dinosaur. He wasn't an idiot, he'd seen pictures of them in books, even if the name of it escaped him right now, tangled up in the sheer terror of being alive at the same time as something that was supposed to be extinct. 

He'd thought the anomaly they were supposed to open was going to take them somewhere where they could get weapons, maybe even gold. He'd dreamed of ending up in Fort Knox and the world having no idea how they'd done it. But just like in Iraq he'd counted his chickens before they'd been hatched. 

There was a low rumbling from behind him but his lungs ached too much, his limbs felt sluggish and everything he thought he knew was turning on its head, a dizzying array of the impossible that was making his stomach churn. 

He needed to move. Do something, call someone. The MoD probably, they'd know what to do. They'd be able to find out who had hired them. Trace the money left in their bank accounts. If, of course, it was still there.

He shook his head and then jerked forward. He opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out except a dribble of blood that he spat on to the ground. He wanted so badly to say something, anything, have his last words remembered by Walters, who was staring at him, eyes wide, more terrified than he'd ever seen another human being. But it was impossible now. Now a creature's horns were embedded in his chest, crushing the life from him. 

He went to the grave with Walter's screams echoing in his ears. 

**5,000 years in the future**

Dr Banyon's anger was palpable and the Clerk took a step back as Banyon whirled on her, face distorted into a terrible picture of rage. 

“How could you let this happen?!”

“I – I – I...” the Clerk stammered, words caught in her throat. She didn't know, she didn't know how it was possible. But it had happened and now she was going to die, she was sure of it. 

“Idiot,” Banyon spat. “You know how important keeping the clones secure is. Or you should do. If you had a brain in that pathetic head of yours. Brady!”

The Clerk flinched as Banyon screamed and then whimpered as she realised that she had wet herself, an embarrassing trail of urine splashing onto the concrete floor. 

Banyon's nose wrinkled up in disgust. 

The man, Brady, a thick set guard with deep-set eyes that looked almost completely black strode into sight. “Yes?” he asked. 

“Take her away.”

The Clerk opened her mouth to speak but nothing would come out. 

“Yes, Dr Banyon. To the cells or...” 

“No,” Banyon replied, “to the pens. The Echolocators deserve a treat.”

The Clerk fainted and Brady caught her and hefted her over his shoulder. He marched out of the room and shut the door firmly behind himself. 

Banyon took a deep breath and surveyed the room. She wanted, desperately, to see evidence of how one of the Helen Cutter clones could have escaped. A faulty circuit perhaps or a door being left unlatched and a Clerk too stupid to admit to her error. Because the alternative was too startling to process and filled Banyon with horror. 

If the Helen Cutter clones were starting to disappear, as if they'd never existed in the first place, it meant that history was being changed. 

And none of them were safe.


	6. Chapter 6

**The Midlands**

“Are you sure this is it?” Sarah asked. 

Danny shrugged and looked back at Abby who had a portable anomaly detector in her hand. Abby nodded. 

“Okay then,” Danny said. He opened the car door and got out, the others following his lead. The soldiers' van was just arriving and they proceeded to exit and fan out, weapons drawn. 

“Do you think anyone's in there?” Sarah asked. She was pointing to a delivery van parked near the gated area, the long fence seemingly erected only to protect a sturdy looking warehouse in the distance. 

“Let's find out,” Danny said. The blond soldier, Patrick Donovan, nodded and went ahead of Sarah and the others. 

Sarah peeked into the cab windows, standing on tip toe and at a safe distance in case anything came out, but it was empty. She shook her head and Danny and Donovan went to the back, Donovan with his gun raised. They locked eyes and on the silent count of three, Danny opened the door and stepped back. 

Donovan moved forward, flicked on his torch and then sighed. There was no threat inside. 

“What is it?” Sarah asked. Danny tried to shield her from seeing but she side-stepped him and peered in. “Oh,” she whispered, moving to cover her mouth and stepping away. “They're dead?” she asked, even though it seemed obvious that they were. 

“Yeah,” Donovan replied, after having jumped in the van to make a cursory check. “Bullet wounds to the head. Both of 'em.”

Danny frowned. “Who the hell would kill a couple of delivery men? And what would they be delivering out here? And to who?” He shook his head in frustration. Far too many questions and so far no one alive to answer them. 

“Er, guys?” Abby said. 

Danny peered his head around the open van door and cursed. Sarah quickly followed. 

“Is that?”

“Pretty sure it's a Triceratops,” Abby said. The familiar looking creature was framed in the doorway of the warehouse, its outline unmistakable. 

“Herbivores, right?” Danny asked. 

Abby nodded. “I think so. We should probably check back with the ARC, though.”

“Yeah,” Danny nodded. 

Donovan stepped out of the van and went over to his men, relaying some orders that he didn't bother filling the others in on. Danny rolled his eyes at Abby but kept silent; no need to start making any more waves between civilian and military than there usually were. 

“Lester should know about the dead men,” Donovan told them eventually. “Whoever shot them wasn't messing around.” He eyed Sarah and Abby unhappily. 

“Don't even think about it,” Sarah said. “We're here and we have a job to do.” She stood up to her full height and straightened her spine, pushing out her shoulders a little. 

Donovan's gaze slide over to Danny for a fraction of a second before back to Sarah. “Understood.” 

Sarah nodded and spun on her heels, not sure if that was a victory or not. She went to join Abby who had been ignoring their discussion in favour of taking photos of the surrounding area and the creature to send back to the ARC. 

Danny moved to the gate's opening mechanism and was examining it closely. “Think we can get this open?”

“Are we sure we want to?” Donovan asked, moving closer. 

Danny turned around. “Meaning?”

“Might be the only thing keeping the creatures contained right now.”

Danny nodded. “Fair point. Up and over then?”

Sarah looked up at the fence. She'd never been a terribly big fan of climbing, though she supposed she could manage just this once. And she was very thankful she'd decided to wear jeans to work this morning. 

“Lorraine just got back to me,” Abby said. “Definitely a Triceratops and definitely a herbivore.”

“That's one less thing to worry about then,” Danny said, attempting a smile. Abby didn't return it. She was looking instead at something not far from the fence, something she'd originally thought was a mound of grass. She slipped farther towards it, pressing carefully against the fence with a finger before getting closer, certain that it wasn't electrified at least. The mound looked more body-like the closer she got to it, but she couldn’t tell from her current position whether it was alive or not. 

Before any one could so much as blink Donovan was climbing the fence and then up and over, landing in a crouch on the other side. He approached the body warily and turned it over with his gun. Abby gasped and took an automatic step back. Donovan moved closer, perfunctorily checking the man's features. He looked Asian, with dark brown hair and eyes and a gun still gripped tightly in his hands. And a gaping hole in his chest. 

“Right,” Danny said, after a moment of absolute silence. “Herbivore doesn't equal friendly. Duly noted.”

**Somewhere over mainland Europe**

Stephen looked with interest around the aeroplane. Lucas hadn't exactly been forthcoming about where the plane had come from, or how they were going to get into Russian airspace without being detected. It seemed like a standard military transport plane, though Stephen admitted to himself that he wasn't exactly an expert on such things. He looked over to where Jenny and Lucas were sitting, apparently deep in conversation. He trusted Lucas, he supposed. At least, he didn't distrust him, and if what he'd said about his treatment in Russia was true, then he certainly knew more about what they were about to face than the rest of them.

Connor was typing away at his computer, when he wasn't gazing in awe at their surroundings, which left Cutter on his own at the back, staring out the window and looking thoroughly fed up. 

Stephen stood up and went to join him. He sat down on the chair next to him and didn't say anything. Cutter glanced at him once and then ignored him. Until finally the older man snapped. 

“What?” he asked. 

Stephen shrugged. “You tell me.”

Cutter looked at him and then looked away quickly. “Nothing.”

Stephen snorted. “Cutter, something's going on with you, and I want to know what.” He turned in his chair so he was facing Cutter's profile. “You've been out of sorts for days. I know you. I know when something is eating at you. And for once I'm pretty certain it isn't me, so...” He paused. “It isn't me, is it?” he asked in a much quieter voice. He _had_ been certain that things were getting okay between them again, especially now that Helen was dead, but maybe...

“No, of course it's not you,” Cutter said firmly. He sighed, looked distressed, and then pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket. “Read this.”

Stephen took the envelope curiously. It was addressed to Cutter's old office at the university and had a Russian stamp on it.

“Russia?” Stephen whispered. Cutter made a get on with it gesture with his hand instead of replying, so Stephen carefully removed the letter from the envelope and scanned it quickly, before reading it again, much slower. His mood didn't improve with a second reading. It was dated two months ago, but that didn’t mean much – Cutter barely remembered to pick up his post from his home when it was lying on the doormat, never mind in the office he hardly ever stepped foot in these days. 

  
_“Dear Professor Cutter,_

You don't know me. And I do not yet know you. Perhaps we will never meet. I am from the future. Or a future. One that isn't set in stone. The anomalies have thrown everything into disarray, have they not? Our world's are no longer separate. Perhaps they have never been so. 

It is my wife who is more knowledgeable about these things. Just as yours was. Is. 

I think by now she is dead, and I am sorry for your loss.”

(Stephen shook his head). _“But her clones live on. My wife is a very great scientist, and just like you and your wife she wishes for a change. Though I am afraid that her changes may be for the worse._

_I am an old man now, weak in body if not yet in mind. Our world is not like yours. The Atlantic Ocean is no more. Many populations died out. Whole races vanished from the Earth. My wife would like to change this, which is good, I think. But she thinks cloning is the answer. Cloning and genetic modification. There is a man, his name is Stephen Hart. You must be wary of him.” _(Stephen almost swore, but checked himself and kept on reading)._ _“He is my wife's creation._ _

_She is working with scientists in a place called Russia. Experiments on Echolocators in exchange for equipment, time, resources. We have only one anomaly that we can use to travel to your time, and it is there, in Russia. I do not know why that is the only one. I know only that my wife keeps secrets from me._

_I tell you this because you, and your team, they are our last hope. You must stop the experiments. I am convinced that they are the reason our world is over run with Echolocators. This Stephen Hart, he can control them and he must not be trusted. His loyalties are suspect._

_I wish you luck. I may see you one day, or perhaps, not. My life as I know it, it is coming to an end._

_Yours in hope,  
Derek Banyon_

__Stephen stared at the letter in his hand, several emotions warring within him. “Why the hell didn't you tell anyone about this?” he hissed after a moment. He looked sharply at Cutter who flushed guiltily.

“I did.”

Stephen opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Lester?” he asked finally. Cutter nodded. Stephen closed his eyes. 

“Becker knows too, I think. Maybe Lucas.”

Stephen nodded, his eyes still closed. That explained why Becker had been looking at him so strangely earlier, while they'd been packing equipment away, like he wanted to say something but was afraid of how Stephen would react. He was so used to getting those kinds of looks though that it had barely registered.

“I don't think Becker knows everything though. Lester agreed we should keep it quiet.”

Stephen opened his eyes and looked at Cutter. “You thought keeping information from the team was a good idea?” He kept his voice flat, trying not to let any emotions leak into it. 

Cutter sighed. “I know, Stephen, I know! Me, keeping secrets. It was... sometimes...you need to understand...” He threw his arms up in the air and Jenny and Connor looked up, wondering what he was doing. “I was worried, about what he was saying about you.”

“Yeah, well, me too,” Stephen muttered. Cutter carried on as if he hadn't been interrupted. 

“And when a Russian angle _did_ appear...I was going to tell you all, honestly. Especially about the Russian anomaly being the only one that leads to this future. That certainly needs exploring.”

“And when exactly were you going to mention it? When we landed in Russia? When we were smack bang in the middle of a firefight? When we were actually through the anomaly?” Stephen's voice was getting louder and louder and Jenny and Connor were both starting to stand up. 

Cutter looked around at them and then shook his head. “I don't know, Stephen. This letter came to me. Maybe I'm the one that's supposed to stop what's happening.”

It sounded hollow and slightly ridiculous to his own ears now that he'd said it out loud but he didn’t back down. Stephen stared at him for a moment, then abruptly stood up, throwing the letter on Cutter's lap and then walking to the front of the plane, ignoring Jenny's plea for information. 

Cutter looked at Jenny and then sighed as she spun around and went after Stephen. Connor looked backwards and then forwards, unsure of what he should do. Finally he settled on going after Stephen, his curiosity about what was happening winning out. 

Cutter found himself alone at the back of the plane and though he tried to feel righteously abandoned about it, in reality he just felt lonely and not a little embarrassed. He'd handled the situation appallingly, and now, just when he needed them, the team were fractured and no doubt wondering what else he was keeping from them. 

He picked up the letter and folded it neatly back into its envelope. 

Whoever this Derek Banyon was Cutter really hoped he had some sort of plan up his sleeve, because right now, Cutter was at a complete loss. 

**5,000 years in the future**

“Are you all right, my dear?” Derek Banyon asked. His wife was sitting at her computer table, but instead of reading the dancing sheet of information before her she was staring off into space, an action that was most unlike her.

Banyon's gaze flickered over to her husband's face and then away again; if Derek hadn't been staring at her, he would have missed it. Her lips pursed almost imperceptibly and a vein in her forehead throbbed, a sure sign that she was barely containing herself. 

After a moment, when it became clear that she wasn't going to say anything Derek left her, with a swift glance at the safe she didn’t think he knew about hidden in the wall. He was starting to think that it was time he ended things for himself, consequences be damned. 

**AAU – Russia**

“This isn't supposed to be happening,” Dmitry said for the third time. Anatoly resisted the urge to throttle his friend silent and motioned for the guards to take Stephen Hart out of the way. 

“Oh dear,” Stephen was saying, the light catching the right side of his face and making him seem even more alien than before. “This is a turn up for the books.”

Anatoly turned to glare at him but was distracted by the floor moving from underneath him. One of the guards screamed, a long guttural sound that made the hairs on the back of Anatoly's neck rise. Anatoly turned and fell, his knee hitting the ground with a loud crack, only to stare, open mouthed, as one of the test subjects plunged their claws inside the guard's chest. Even in his terrified state he could see that it was a hideous replay of the very kind of operations the scientists did on the subjects. 

He moved to push himself up, hands flailing on the wet ground – wet with blood, he realised – and fought back the urge to vomit. They needed to get out, to seal the Kill Zone. He needed to find out just how this could have happened. 

Stephen Hart was standing nonchalantly by the doorway, a smile playing across his face. 

“Did you do this?” Anatoly hissed. 

Stephen shrugged. “I'd say you're getting your just desserts, wouldn’t you?”

“This isn't – I -” Anatoly had no answer. Part of him agreed with the strange visitor. But part of him was mourning his colleagues and fearful for his own life. All it had taken was for him to do nothing, and evil had been given free reign in the name of science. Likho's Lair was well-named after all. 

“I could stop them, of course,” Stephen said. “If that's what you want?”

“Of course that's what I want.” Anatoly was close to the other man now, able to see the web of scarring across his face, the thin line between human and creature. 

Stephen shrugged, then whistled. Every creature, human and animal alike, froze. The silence was almost more terrifying than the screaming, and Anatoly took a moment to regain his breath. The anomaly was still there, pulsing quietly in the background, but so far nothing had come through, which Anatoly supposed was a blessing in itself. Event Horizon One, their own personal anomaly to the future, was in a secure area, slightly away from the AAU. The idea being that no one could connect the two who didn't already know of the existence of anomalous events. The very AAU was supposed to be protected from anomalous lights opening, the walls themselves sealed with technology from the future that should have prevented this very act. That was supposed to keep them hidden from all sorts of prying eyes.

But then, he mused, as Stephen gave a simple hand command and all the test subjects lay down on the floor like obedient puppy dogs, they only had the future representative's word for that. And they only met with the Professor in private. Who knew what went on behind closed doors?

“There,” Stephen said, “that should hold them for a little while. Though between you and me,” he moved forward to whisper in Anatoly's ear, “I'd rethink your experiments. They don't seem to take kindly to being dissected whilst awake.”

Anatoly nodded. They would have to be put down. Something he very carefully did not say aloud where Stephen could hear him. 

He looked around for Dmitry and was strangely grateful to find him cowering under a table near the back of the room, apparently unhurt. 

“We need to seal this anomalous event, now!” he shouted. Two of the guards ran to one of the offices and began to assemble the equipment. It was easily done; they'd had enough practice drills that they all should have been able to perform the task in their sleep. 

“Sir, we can't seal it,” one of the soldiers told him. 

“What do you mean, you can't?”

“There's a piece missing, sir.”

“What about - “

“The same piece is missing from all the rooms, sir,” the soldier interrupted before Anatoly could give the obvious order. Anatoly's eyes narrowed. 

“Sabotage?”

The soldier reluctantly straightened his spine. “So it would seem, sir.”

The test subjects all flexed their backs as one, and the soldier's trained their weapons on them. But they didn't make any other move, and if Anatoly didn't know better he'd swear they all looked smug. But he did know better. They didn't have that kind of intelligence. 

He hoped they didn’t have that kind of intelligence. 

“Where's the prisoner?” Dmitry asked. He crawled out from under his table and dusted himself down. 

“He's right - “ Anatoly stopped. The door behind him was open, the broken door handle on the floor. It would have taken considerable strength to do that without him hearing. Considerable nerve too. 

“Oh dear,” said Dmitry. “The Professor isn't going to like this.”

Anatoly frowned. Now that, there, was definitely smug. “Call him,” Anatoly said. Dmitry looked confused. “We need him here, now. Guards, set up a perimeter. Nothing gets in or out of this room. If we can't lock the anomalous light, we can at least do that much. Dima, take the test subjects to another containment room.” He gave Dmitry a significant glance and Dmitry nodded that he understood. The creature's shifted a little, but for the moment made no other movement. 

“And what are you going to do?” Dmitry asked. 

Anatoly took a handgun from one of the soldiers and checked that it was loaded. “I'm going to get some answers.” And before anyone could stop him he was disappearing through the door, intent on getting the truth from Stephen Hart any way he could.


	7. Chapter 7

“You're an idiot,” Jenny said, but as Cutter looked up he noted a hint of affection in her expression. She reached down and picked up the envelope that he was still holding loosely in his hand and proceeded to examine it for herself. Connor and Stephen came up behind her. 

“Do you think he's talking about me? About something I'm going to do?” Stephen asked. His face was as a blank as he could make it, but Cutter knew him well enough to know the emotions he was trying to conceal. He should have known him well enough to confide in him in the first place. 

“I don't know,” Cutter said, “and I don't care. You're not...you're not untrustworthy. I don't believe that. I should have sat you down and shown you the letter in the first place. But...” He shook his head. What's done had been done, there wasn't any real reason to rehash it all now. 

Becker and Lucas, who had been having a private conversation in the corner, now came over. “I'm responsible for your safety,” Becker said. “It should have been my call whether or not you were all made privy to the implications in the letter. I should have shared this with you before we left England.” 

Stephen and Cutter shared a conspiratorial eye-roll, which is the exact moment that Cutter knew he had been forgiven. 

“I'm Team Leader, it's my call.”

Becker opened his mouth to object when Jenny sat down on a chair in front of Cutter with a jolt. “If you two have quite finished hoisting yourselves on your own petards, we need to come up with a plan. If this...Dr Banyon gets in our way, how are we going to deal with him? I take it none of us believe that Stephen is going to do anything to jeopardise the mission?” She barely even paused as she said this, not looking around at anyone. “Then how much of his other information can we trust? Do we believe this letter is from the future or is it some sort of hoax...”

“It isn't a hoax,” Lucas interrupted her. “At least, the part about them having an anomaly that goes straight to the future.” He took out a memory stick from his pocket and handed it to Stephen. “Ruth and Tariq, back at Thames House, have been doing some digging. Two of our agents died getting that out of Russia. It's plans of their facility, which they call the Anomalous Analysis Unit, or AAU. There's also another facility, further out on a walkway that houses an anomaly. There are some recordings on there too, that corroborate at least some of this Banyon's story.”

Jenny looked astonished and Cutter couldn't blame her, he was feeling distinctively out of the loop himself. “And when exactly were you going to fill us in on all this?” she asked. 

Lucas shrugged. “When it felt necessary.”

Stephen shook his head. “Bloody spooks,” he muttered under his breath. “Anything else?” he asked, much louder. 

Lucas eyed him carefully. “They've been using future technology to shore up their facilities. How much, what kind, we don't know. Enough to be dangerous, anyway.”

“And I take it you two have been cooking up a plan to help us deal with that, then?” Jenny asked, waving a hand to encompass both Lucas and Becker, who was standing slightly behind Lucas, looking sheepish. 

“The thing you need to know about me,” Lucas drawled, the look he gave Jenny anything but reassuring, “is I always have a plan.”

**The Midlands**

“They were probably just spooked and attacked the first people they saw,” Abby said in a low whisper. She, Sarah and Danny had joined the soldiers on the other side of the fence, much to Lt. Donovan's annoyance. He'd made some remarks about interfering civilians and now the already anxious air around them had increased tenfold. 

Danny nodded, willing to take her word for it. She was after all the expert in animal behaviour, and she'd been doing this a lot longer than he had. “And we reckon the anomaly is in the warehouse?”

Abby nodded, casting her hand-held detector a cursory glance. “I don't see where else it could be.”

Donovan nodded, moving forward to transplant himself in the middle of the small civilian group. “And I presume you want us to get those things back through in one piece?”

“Yes,” Abby said, sharply. “I presume I do.”

Danny pursed his lips, waiting to see what would happen. He could see that the dinosaurs were dangerous, but he could also see that Abby had a valid hypothesis for why they might have attacked, and if it came down to a showdown between the young woman and the soldier, he was picking Abby every time. 

“And how do you propose we do that?” Donovan asked. He scanned the horizon, not really looking at Abby, whose face looked thunderous, even if her voice remained commendably neutral. 

“Loud noise should do it. Make them herd back to the anomaly. They probably only need a little push to set them going...”

Abby's final words were drowned out by gun shots. Danny pulled his gun out and scanned the area while two of the soldiers joined Donovan in standing in front of Abby and Sarah. Slightly slower to react, Abby pulled out her tranquilliser gun, feeling better for having it in her hand, even if she knew it wouldn't do much good against a Triceratops _or_ human attackers. 

“What the hell?” Danny cursed. They all looked on in alarm as a soldier near the warehouse fired at one of the Triceratops' legs. “Is she one of yours?”

“No, sir,” Donovan replied. “Must be one of the team that took out the delivery men.” 

“What _is_ going on?” Sarah asked, looking totally baffled. Danny shared the sentiment. 

“Buggered if I know, but we've got to help her.”

“We do, you don't,” Donovan said firmly. His tone brooked no dissent and whilst Danny would normally push it, this was one time when he swallowed his argument. 

Donovan motioned to two of his men and they ran off, straight into danger. The female soldier halted when she saw them coming, and then raised her gun and pointed it straight at Donovan. 

“Oh my god,” Sarah whispered. 

Another Triceratops joined the first, its distinctive outline peeking out of the warehouse. The female soldier dropped to one leg, her gun falling from her hands and Donovan and his men continued forward. 

Sarah relaxed the breath she'd been holding and then frowned at Abby, who was fiddling with the anomaly detector. 

“What are you doing?” 

“The anomalies interfere with radio signals, right? So if the detector can pick up that interference, then it can also...” She grinned as her work paid off and Lady Gaga began to loudly play through the detector's speakers. “Bingo”.

“That's all very good, but won't you need to be near the dinosaurs to make them go back?”

Abby shrugged and easily slipped between the two soldiers supposedly guarding them. 

“Oi! You can't just...”

Danny grinned and pushed his way past the soldiers. “Sorry, guys, but I'm with the little lady. You,” he said, pointing at Sarah, “stay there.” And with that he was running after Abby. 

Sarah opened her mouth, and then closed it. She wasn't really sure what she was going to say, and if truth be told she wasn’t ever so keen on dealing with a crazed gun woman _and_ a pack of dinosaurs. 

“You can go too, if you want,” she said. “I'm just going to stay here.”

The man and woman exchanged glances before looking back at Sarah. “If you promise not to move?” the woman asked. Sarah nodded and then watched, rather forlornly, as they too ran off. 

Sarah could just make out the chaos in front of her, the ARC soldiers pulling the injured soldier out of the way, the gun cracking under the feet of one of the dinosaurs, Abby and Danny wildly flailing their arms, almost in beat to the dance music that Sarah could still make out, even as far from the warehouse as she was. And then all became quiet as Danny and Abby entered the building. 

Sarah waited, anxiously trying not to bite her fingernails, all her concentration focused on the warehouse in front of her. So it was not surprising that she jumped as a woman's voice whispered in her ear. 

“And just who might you be?”

“Sarah Page,” Sarah replied quickly, not even thinking for a moment that she shouldn’t be answering this woman's question. 

“I see,” the woman said. She eyed Sarah up and down and Sarah rather felt like a mouse caught in a viper's glare. Sarah gulped and did some assessing of her own. The woman was attractive, with long brown hair but a cold look to her eyes and the set of her mouth that set Sarah's already frayed nerves further on edge. “You're the ARC's newest recruit.” Sarah's face fell. “Oh don't worry, I have full security clearance.” She huffed a small laugh. “Certainly higher than you do.”

“Are you here to help?” Sarah asked. 

The woman's smile turned even colder. “Of course. Why else would I be here?”

Sarah might be more comfortable in dusty rooms, transcribing ancient manuscripts, but she knew people. And this woman was definitely not to be trusted. 

“And your name is...?”

“How rude of me.” She extended a hand that Sarah felt obligated to shake. “My name's Christine Johnson. I'm your new boss.”

**The AAU**

The corridors around the Kill Zone were, by necessity, well lit, but right now the very shadows seemed like ghostly shapes, waiting to prey on Anatoly as he hurried in the direction he presumed Stephen Hart had gone. There were the faintest of scuff marks on the floor to track his passage, though Anatoly had long come to presume that they had been deliberately left for him, breadcrumbs leading him right to the witch’s lair. 

Who knew what kind of powers this Stephen Hart had? He'd read the reports about the Other's Stephen Hart, seen the video footage, the psychological testing. And yet he looked no different than an ordinary human. This Stephen Hart, he definitely looked otherworldly. Anatoly cursed the anomalous events under his breath as he came to a fork in the corridors – the left led back to the entrance to the facility, the right led to towards the AAU's anomaly. For all the sense it made for Stephen Hart to head that way, to escape back to whatever time he had come from, Anatoly didn't feel that that had been the purpose of his visit. 

So he turned left. 

**The ARC**

“Surely there's something you can do,” Lorraine was saying. She was barely holding back her tears, borne more from anger than sadness. She couldn't believe that Lester, the man who had calmly faced down armed soldiers in this very room, was letting this happen without a fight. 

“I have been replaced,” Lester told her, not for the first time. “There is nothing that anyone can do about it.”

“But I don't understand,” Lorraine said. “How can you just...” 

Lester stepped forward and gently took her hands in his. “I need you to do something for me.”

“I – anything,” she said. 

Lester smiled sadly. “Your loyalty is appreciated. I know I might not have been the most _understanding_ of bosses...”

“You’ve done just fine,” Lorraine sniffled, interrupting him. “What can I do?”

“I need you to slap me.”

Lorraine's mouth dropped. “What?” she asked, when she was certain that she could. 

“I need you to slap me. Hard.”

“I don't...”

“Just trust me.”

Lorraine hesitated for a moment, and then pulled her hands from his and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. The noise reverberated around the atrium and she winced, almost apologising before the glare that Lester shot her shut her up. 

“How dare you!” Lester shouted and grabbed Lorraine's arm. Rightly guessing that she was supposed to play along, Lorraine half-heartedly struggled as Lester pulled her out of the atrium’s door. She was surprised, and deeply worried, that the only people who saw anything unusual about this behaviour were the last few of the ARC scientists, who were being herded into one of the laboratories. The others, soldiers she'd guess even though they were largely in civilian clothing, had just smirked. 

“What are you doing?” she hissed, as Lester looked around and pulled her none to gently into the workspace Connor had been using. Instead of replying Lester grabbed a memory stick from the computer and turned to Lorraine, making an aborted motion as if he wanted to drop it down the front of her blouse. 

“I'll, eh, do that, myself,” Lorraine said with a smile. Lester nodded, looking embarrassed as Lorraine secured the memory stick as best she could in her bra. 

“Hurry up, we need to continue making a scene. They'll be too distracted to search you that way.”

“Okay, but what am I supposed to do with it?”

Lester pulled her, more gently this time, now that she knew where they were going, towards the entrance to the ARC. 

“Get to Thames House,” he told her as he pushed her through the doors. As he'd predicted, the new staff were more interested in watching the show than in checking to see that the attractive woman wasn't taking anything out of the building she shouldn't be. “They'll be expecting you.”

Before she could do or ask anything else the ARC, her home away from home, was closed to her. And she was all alone.


	8. Chapter 8

“This isn't a plan,” Stephen muttered under his breath, “this is suicide.” Jenny looked over at him sharply, her lips pursed. But for all the desire she had to tell him that he was wrong, that Lucas North knew exactly what he was doing, she couldn't get the words out. They had all agreed to defer to Lucas' greater knowledge of Russia and they would just have to be on their guard in case it went wrong. 

Jenny slowly shook her head. No, _when_ it went wrong. 

Lucas was sitting at the front of the plane with Connor eagerly taking down his instructions and tapping away at his laptop. 

“Connor thinks it will work.”

Stephen's expression barely wavered. “It's not Connor I'm worried about.”

Jenny patted Stephen's arm. “If you can think of another way...” 

Stephen looked at her, frustration now evident on his face. “No. We have to do it Lucas' way.”

Jenny nodded. “It won't be much longer till we're on the ground anyway. And if Connor can...”

“Bingo!” Connor shouted and everyone on the plane turned in time to see him do a comical jig in his seat, before he flushed and resumed typing. Even Lucas looked amused. “Er, found 'em,” Connor added unnecessarily. 

Cutter joined Stephen and Jenny in crowding around Connor's laptop. A string of numbers and plans that they could recognise as the Russian facility was moving at speed across the monitor. Some of it they recognised from the data of their own ADD, even if they couldn’t explain what it was, but the rest may as well have been in Klingon for all the sense they could make of it. 

“So you can convince them that an anomaly has opened outside their facility?” Cutter asked. 

Connor nodded, shooting Cutter a happy smile. “Yep.”

“That will create suitable chaos for us to be able to slip in undetected,” Lucas said. “If Becker and his men are ready?”

Becker, who'd spent the last fifteen minutes in deep conversation with the small unit of soldiers he'd hand-picked for this mission, nodded, his expression giving nothing away. He trusted that his men would be able to infiltrate the Unit but he was more than a little concerned about any possible civilian casualties. Lester had made it very clear that his first priority was ensuring that no harm came to any of the members of the ARC team under his protection. 

“And how do we get through the security once we've breached the perimeter?” Jenny asked. Cutter shot her a surprised look, but she ignored him in favour of staring at Lucas. 

Lucas shrugged. “Then we let ourselves be taken prisoner.”

Becker blinked in surprise. “We what?”

Lucas smiled, a dangerous glint to his eyes. “We want to find out what they're doing in that facility, don't we? And the best way to do that is if we're inside the structure. Create a loud enough problem and they'll want to question us to find out what we know.”

Stephen folded his arms in front of himself in an effort not to do anything rash. “And what if they decide they'd rather put a bullet in our heads than ask any questions?”

“At least it'll be a quick death.”

Cutter spluttered. “Are you out of your mind? We can't take risks like that.”

“Then don't. Becker and I can take his men inside. You don't need to do anything.”

Cutter opened his mouth and then closed it. It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion. And much as he wanted to disagree, he knew that would be foolish. And he certainly didn’t want Jenny getting hurt. 

“We could check out the anomaly itself,” Stephen suggested after a moment. He held up a hand to forestall Becker's attempt at an objection. “We don't have to get too close, but Connor can at least get a safe distance away so we can take some readings and work out why it seems to be fixed in time.”

After a moment Becker reluctantly nodded. “I'll go with you, though. Lucas can lead my team.”

With that settled everyone moved back to their seats. They had more preparations to make, both practical and mental, before they would be attempting Lucas' plan. And all of them were silently praying that his assessment of the situation was correct. Otherwise none of them would be around to tell the tale. 

**The Midlands**

Danny followed as closely behind Abby as he could, wincing at the music pouring out of her hand-held detector. He was more of a Sex Pistols fan himself. 

He glanced over at Donovan and his men, who at least seemed to have their situation under control. Donovan was handing off the woman that had been shooting at the dinosaurs to one of the female soldiers and moving forwards. Danny nodded at him; he figured he and Abby would need all the help they could get. 

Abby's plan seemed to be working well so far though. The Triceratops' were startled by the sounds around them, and clearly just wanting to go back home where everything was familiar. Once one started to move back through the anomaly, the others followed. 

Except one. Danny would never be able to explain quite how it happened, but one of them got separated from the rest and Abby moved closer, _too close,_ to make it move towards the anomaly. But the Triceratops had jerked its head low and Abby had been forced to move around it, her back now to the anomaly. She saw the danger the same moment that Danny did but it felt like everything happened in slow motion. Danny tried to run towards her, or to grab at the Triceratops, but he felt like he was moving through treacle, every twitch of his muscles an effort because he knew, he just _knew_ that he wasn't going to be able to get to her in time.

She turned around, once, quickly, and then looked back at him. Holding back her fear she turned off the music on the detector and raised it up, so Danny could see she still had it. And then, with the Triceratops and its horns bearing down on her, she stepped through the anomaly. 

Moments later it closed, leaving an orphaned Triceratops in its wake.

**The AAU**

Anatoly wondered, not for the first time, where his back-up was. An anomalous light opening up in the AAU was certainly concerning. He shook his head, no, actually, it was the second most horrifying thing that had happened to him today, but that still didn't explain why no one had come after him and this Stephen Hart. They could track him on their security cameras, let him know where he had gone. 

He sighed, though he didn't release his grip on his weapon and tried to get his bearings. There should be a panel a few feet away with a radio hidden behind it. He would head there and try to find out what was happening in the rest of the facility. As much as he feared the man, the Professor's input now was necessary to calm things down, so hopefully he would be on his way too. 

As he turned the corner he halted, and raised his weapon. 

“You looking for this?” Stephen Hart asked. He was dangling a radio in his hand, the panel lying on the floor at his feet. 

“How did you know where to find that?” Anatoly asked. 

Stephen smirked. “I've read all the plans to this building. I know this place even better than you do.”

Something clicked in Anatoly's brain, something that he hadn't been willing to set free until now. “You're from the future?”

“Oh, well done. If I had both hands free, I'd clap.”

“I'm not afraid to shoot you,” Anatoly told him, cursing the slight waver to his voice. It had been a long time since he'd shot anybody. 

“Shooting me won't get you the answers you need.”

Anatoly agreed that that might be the case, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to lower his weapon. The choice was taken from him though when a grey hand, long, thin and clawed, descended from the ceiling and wrapped itself around his gun. He let go of it automatically and stared up into the eyes and teeth of a fearsome looking test subject. 

“Don't worry,” Stephen Hart said, still smirking, “having you eaten won't get me the answers I need either.”

**5,000 years in the future**

Derek Banyon looked down with some sadness at the body of his wife. Her neck was twisted at an unusual angle and there was a slither of blood by her mouth. If he was honest with himself he was more surprised that he'd been able to summon up the strength to kill her than that he'd actually gone through with his plan. But slowly poisoning her hadn't been working and he had needed to act.

As his wife had often reminded him, he never followed through on his plans, so it was all the more surprising to him that he had taken this final step after all.

He sighed. He really didn't have time for this sentimental nonsense. He needed to leave the room and concoct an alibi. But first... 

He moved over to the safe hidden behind a holographic projection and reached into the bowels of its illusion, pulling a small rectangular object out and sticking it inside a hidden compartment in his walking stick. Just as he placed the stick back on the floor, one of the Helen Cutter clones appeared before him. 

“You killed my wife,” he said, in low measured tones. “You were fed up of being treated badly. So you snapped her neck.”

The clone nodded her head. “Yes. I did,” she said and Derek smiled. His wife had always said this clone was the stupidest of the bunch and it would appear that she had been right. 

And then she vanished right before his eyes. 

Derek blinked unhappily a few times and then started to hurry out of the room. Events were moving faster than planned but that was all right, he'd just move on to Plan B, that was all. 

**The Midlands**

Danny stared, in mounting horror, at the place where the anomaly had been. Where Abby had been. The soldiers behind him were making noise, talking to him, pointing at the Triceratops still stuck in their time, but to Danny it just sounded like a deep humming, beating him squarely in the chest. It seemed like minutes passed before he could breathe, before he could think. 

“You need to contain that,” Danny said dismissively to the soldiers. Three of them turned to glare at him before turning back to the Triceratops, clearly recognising that Danny was in no fit state to help them. Donovan was presumably still outside, dealing with the female soldier who'd been shooting her gun off. 

With what felt like jerky, half-hearted movements, Danny pulled his mobile out of his pocket and dialled a familiar number. Seconds later, Jenny answered. 

“Danny? Is everything all right? Because we're nearly ready to land and...”

“Abby's gone.” He paused, took a deep breath. Saying it out loud was far worse than thinking it. Than seeing it. 

“What?” Jenny asked. Her voice sounded distant, tinny, and he realised that she'd switched to the speaker phone. “What did you say about Abby?”

“Abby?” Connor's voice cut in. “What happened?”

“There were some Triceratops',” Danny said. He was trying to keep his voice calm, trying to remember his police training. None of that seemed of any help where the young woman was concerned though. “Lots of them. We...Abby came up with a plan to get them back through the anomaly.” He paused. The fear of knowing what was about to happen and not being able to stop it pulled at his vocal chords. 

“And?” Cutter's voice asked. “And?”

“And she. She got stuck between the anomaly and a dinosaur. There was nowhere else for her to go.”

There was a stunned silence on the other end of the phone. 

“You have to go after her,” Cutter said after a moment. “I don't care...”

“The anomaly's gone, Cutter. Abby's gone.”

“No,” Connor murmured. “No, not again.”

“We're landing,” another voice said, and it took a moment for Danny to recognise Lucas North's voice. “There's nothing any of you can do from here.”

There was some sort of scuffle then and Danny could only imagine what was happening. “Connor, come on Connor,” Stephen was saying and if Danny wasn't very much mistaken he was pulling the younger man off Lucas. 

“Do whatever you have to Danny,” Jenny said. “Anything.”

“Of course,” Danny replied. “I'll get Lester to send reinforcements. We'll fix this.” 

The phone call ended abruptly and Danny stared at it. He wondered if Jenny just didn’t have anything more to say to him, or if something had happened. He had no way of knowing. And suddenly the weight of the world was on his shoulders. 

He turned around, facing towards the large warehouse doors and jerked in surprise as he saw Sarah standing next to a woman he didn't recognise. She was wearing a business suit and even if Sarah’s body language wasn't screaming how uncomfortable she was, the words of warning she was attempting to mouth at him would give the game away. 

“And who the bloody hell are you?” he asked. 

“Ah, Mr Quinn,” the woman replied, smiling and stepping forward. She extended her hand which Danny just stared at. In his experience you could never trust a woman with manicured nails. The woman’s smile barely faltered but she leaned forward a little, and Danny's strained nerves took another jolt. “You can call me 'guv.”

**Somewhere, Some Place**

Abby bit her lip to keep from groaning. One minute she'd been in the middle of whatever time the Triceratops had roamed the earth – what time was it, she knew this... She frowned, trying to remember what Lorraine had told her, but the world was a little fuzzy right now. And now...

She opened her eyes fully and looked around. The glimpse of landscape she'd caught before was nothing like this. She'd been running so hard that she'd had no time to stop herself from running straight through another anomaly that had been _right there_ before she'd been able to hit the brakes. There were no Triceratops ready to impale her at least. Not that she didn’t have other creatures to worry about. 

Like the future predators sitting up and eyeing her with interest. Like they hadn't eaten in a while and she was their favourite dish. Of course, that may very well be the case, given that she was sitting in the middle of a group of them. Inside an impressive looking cage. 

“Sorry guys,” she whispered, in a quiet plea to her absent friends, “but this time, I really don't see how I'm getting out of this.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Thames House**

Lorraine had never been to Thames House before. She knew where it was, of course. She'd gone to university in London and knew it pretty well. But there was something about that area that had always given her the creeps. Ironic really that she'd then gone on to work at an even more secretive organisation. 

She tried to smile at the thought, but failed miserably. 

She'd had the foresight to nip into a Starbucks and get herself cleaned up – her mascara had smudged and her clothing had still been misshapen from when Lester had grabbed her. Plus she had been trying to ensure that she wasn't being followed by going on a somewhat circuitous route around London and its environs. Whether her plan worked or whether the soldiers who'd taken over the ARC just really didn't care about her, she seemed to be totally alone. 

She sighed, finished her latte, tossed the cup in a bin and then strode over to Thames House. She was sure she was being watched by all manner of people on the CCTV cameras and she did wonder for a moment if Lester had meant for her to be so obvious in her approach, but she decided there was no help for it now. 

“Ms Wilkes, it's good to see you.”

Lorraine looked up in surprise to see Ruth Evershed, Section D's analyst and Harry Pearce's right-hand woman waiting for her. Lorraine was immediately put at ease. In her few dealings with Ruth she'd found her to be startlingly intelligent, practical and tenacious, traits she hoped she shared. 

“Ms Evershed...”

“Please, it's Ruth.” Ruth walked down a few steps, glanced around at the street and then nodded, as if to herself, before taking Lorraine gently by the elbow and leading her into the building. “Let's get you set up in Harry's office, and then you can fill us all in on what's happened.”

Lorraine nodded. “Not that it'll take long,” she said. “I don't really know anything.”

Ruth smiled grimly. “You'd be surprised how untrue that often turns out to be.”

Lorraine only hoped she was right. 

**The Midlands**

“Abby?” Sarah asked, waving her hand in roughly the direction of where she supposed the anomaly had been. She pointedly ignored the staring contest Danny was having with Christine Johnson. 

“Yeah, she went through,” Danny said after a moment. “And what do you mean, I can call you `guv'?”

Christine smiled. “Christine Johnson,” she held out her hand again which Danny ignored. “I'm the new head of the Anomaly Research Centre.”

“What about Lester?”

“He will still be there. In a supervisory capacity. For the time being.”

“How did this happen?” He glared at Christine and then over at Sarah, who just shrugged. She was as much in the dark as he was. 

“The Prime Minister's Office decided that after recent events the ARC needed to be run by someone with a firmer grasp on the global ramifications of the anomaly project.”

Danny frowned. He was seconds away from telling her she was talking bollocks, but Sarah's pleading eyes made him reconsider. Still, he didn't like this. He didn’t like it one bit. 

“And Lester just stepped down did he?”

Christine shrugged. “I wasn't there.”

Danny took a deep breath and then stepped back a few paces. Christine Johnson didn't seem concerned with personal space, and it was starting to grate on him. 

“And you just happened to be in the neighbourhood, here, did you?”

For the first time, Christine's faux smile dropped. “Something like that.” She turned away and started to walk towards the door. “But we can discuss all that back at the ARC.”

“Hang on,” Danny said, not moving. “I'm not going anywhere until we get Abby back.”

Christine spun around on her high heels, their squeak against the concrete floor making everyone but her wince. “The loss of any personnel is a tragedy, but there really is nothing we can do now.”

“She's not dead,” Sarah said, “she's just trapped in the past.”

“Really?” Christine asked. The patronising look she threw Sarah made Sarah's face drop. It was almost as if Christine was refusing to believe them. Or that she knew something they didn't. 

“Yes, really,” Danny almost growled. “And I promised Cutter...”

“You've already told him?” Christine interrupted. 

Danny hesitated. “Yeah. So, what's the big deal?”

“Oh, nothing.” She wasn't fooling anybody. “I understand they aren't in the country.”

Danny and Sarah exchanged worried looks. They both came to the same conclusion. Christine Johnson wasn't the kind of woman to ask a question to which she didn't already know the answer. 

“Yeah,” Danny answered finally. “They're on a plane to Russia.”

“Well, we'll see about that.”

“Meaning?”

But Christine ignored him in favour of turning towards the soldiers, who'd been watching proceedings with curious eyes. “Donovan, isn't it?”

“Yes, ma'am,” the soldier replied. 

“Excellent. Take Ms Page and Mr Quinn to my car will you. We'll be heading back to the ARC shortly.”

“Now just wait a damn minute...” Danny began. 

“You can't order us around...” Sarah said at almost the same time. 

“I will not tolerate anything less than my direct orders being followed,” she said to Donovan, voice icy. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Donovan replied, though he didn't look particularly happy about it. He shot Danny an apologetic look but Danny just snorted. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Just following orders. Where have I heard that before?” 

Sarah, looking genuinely scared for the first time, moved to stand next to Danny. She'd do whatever Danny thought was right. If he thought they should stay there and kick up a fuss, and try to find a way to get Abby back, then she would. But there were only two of them now, not including the soldiers, who didn’t seem like they were on their side any more. Which meant they were outnumbered. 

After a moment Danny nodded. “Okay, back to the ARC it is.”

Donovan smiled, relieved, and moved away to give instruction to his soldiers. Danny smoothly passed by him, whispered at a startled Sarah to go along with it, then pulled his gun from where he'd tucked it in his jeans and grabbed Christine around the neck. 

It all happened so fast nobody had the chance to move, least of all the soldiers who were still warily keeping an eye on a Triceratops that for the moment didn't look like it wanted to go anywhere. 

“Right,” Danny said, pointing the gun at Christine's head. “How about we get some real answers?”

**Somewhere in Russia**

Jenny handed Connor another mug of tea, with a dash of whiskey in it this time, and watched with worried eyes as he downed it in one go. She knew right now he'd probably prefer more whiskey and less tea, but that wasn't the sort of thing she thought she should be encouraging. 

Since Danny's phone call they'd all been engaged in a heated debate about what they should do. Connor was all for turning around right away and finding a way to open an anomaly. He figured since they had the technology to lock anomalies (none of them pointed out that so far that hadn't worked) then it only made sense that opening an anomaly would use a similar technique. Jenny hadn't quite followed that logic and by the look Cutter gave her, neither did he. 

But the rest of them had all agreed that, despite how worried they were about Abby, she was perfectly capable of looking after herself (and Danny hadn't indicated she was injured before passing through the anomaly) and that it would simply take too long for them to return. They had landed in Russia now and they did, after all, have a job to do. 

“People may be in danger here,” Stephen said, finally. He knelt down so he was eye-level with Connor's slumped form. “Abby wouldn't want them to be harmed because we were worried about her.” He put his hand on Connor's knee. “And Danny and Sarah have the whole of the ARC at their disposal. They're in a much better position to help than we are.”

After a moment's silence Connor nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. But I want to talk to the technicians at the ARC as soon as I can. Get them working on a solution.”

“Of course,” Jenny said, brightly. The tight knot in her stomach slowly started to unwind. “I'll give them a call now.”

Connor nodded as Cutter patted him on the shoulder. “Everything will be fine.”

Lucas, who'd been standing in the shadows, out of the way, finally stepped forward. “So we go ahead with the original plan, then?”

Before anyone could respond though, his phone rang. And then Jenny's. Then Cutter's. Then Stephen's. And finally, Connor's. Surprised, they all looked down and read the caller ID, then exchanged concerned glances. 

Thames House was calling. 

**The AAU**

“Is this how they do things in the future?” Anatoly asked after a moment. He glanced up at the creature still hanging from the ceiling, and Stephen Hart, who was still smirking at him.

“Sometimes,” Stephen said. “I had a fairly ruthless teacher.”

Anatoly wisely remained silent. If this Stephen Hart was from a different time line perhaps his history was different from that of the Other Stephen, but Anatoly found it hard to believe that Helen Cutter's pervasive presence wasn't somehow involved in this young man's life too. 

When the Russians had become aware of a British anomaly team, over a year ago, (the lucky coincidence of having one of their agents in the right place at the right time) they had gathered as much information as they possibly could on the team. And Anatoly had devoured that information. From the teams' favourite haunts, to their preferred breakfasts, to their relationship status, to their spiritual philosophies, he felt like he knew the team far better than his own family. He firmly believed that you should know your enemy to understand them, even if they were only nominally enemies. 

He wondered how much, if anything, the Others knew about the Russian project, but dismissed them almost immediately. They may be intelligent but their case files showed that a remarkable amount of luck rather than skill was inherent in their ability to send creatures back through their anomalies. Their leadership also seemed spotty and haphazard and their resources were hardly on a par with the AAU's. 

It only took a moment for these thoughts to flash before his eyes and when he finally focused back on the situation at hand, Stephen was staring at him curiously, head tilted at a strange angle.

“You know, I know someone who's been working on increasing humanity's perceptions. On their sixth sense. Telepathy. That kind of thing.” Anatoly startled. “Oh, don't worry, she's not quite there yet.”

“What is it you want with me?”

Stephen straightened and gave a quick motion with his fingers. The creature disappeared and Anatoly found that he could breathe again. 

Stephen cleared his throat. Anatoly was surprised by the confused look on his face.“I'm supposed to want to help you. That's one of the reasons I was sent here. So you could study me. Make more hybrids.” He shook his head. “But all I feel for you is a murderous rage.”

“I don't like it either,” Anatoly said quickly. “I haven't liked it for a long time now. I was trying to get help, from the Others. When the anomaly opened...”

“Yes, that was unexpected,” Stephen agreed. “It wasn't supposed to open yet.”

“But you knew it would?”

Stephen shrugged. “I know a lot of things.” He looked around the corridor and his lips twitched. “The other anomaly, the one that goes to my time, it isn't here is it?”

Anatoly shook his head. “We can get there through the underground tunnels though. If you want.”

After a moment where Anatoly forced his body to still, barely breathing, Stephen nodded. 

**The ARC**

James Lester paced anxiously in the gym. He was completely alone. Except of course, he silently added with a snort, for the armed guard outside the door. 

He shook his head. He should have seen this coming. Or at least, he should have planned better for it. Collating the information was all very well and good but he'd never imagined an actual armed take-over, not again. He'd imagined a play of words, one upmanship in diplomatic circles, not this. He waved a hand in frustration. All very well sending Lorraine off like that but if she was stopped. Or worse. He'd never forgive himself. 

He plonked himself down on one of the weight machines and then stood up again, continued his pacing. His nerves were on edge. He didn’t think that they were in mortal danger, but then again, he hadn't thought such a brazen overthrow of his position had been tenable that morning either. None of his sources had reported anything like this being on the horizon. 

Lester hated to admit it, but for the moment he was outmanoeuvred. Christine Johnson was a far greater adversary than he'd given her credit for. And that may well be the undoing of the ARC program as it stood today.

He just prayed no one else would pay too grave a price for his mistake. 

**Somewhere, Some Place**

Abby kept herself very still, although she knew she would be no match for one future predator, never mind this many. She wondered where she was, but she couldn't make out anything in the dim light apart from this cage and an empty desk off to the right. Perhaps whoever sat there normally had just popped out to make a cup of tea and would be back at any moment? That's what she was pinning her hopes on, anyway. 

At least the predators didn't look like they were about to eat her, which was something. In fact after a cursory sniff of her hair they seemed to be ignoring her. Some of them had on the control device she was now so familiar with, but the majority of them did not. She wondered what that meant. 

A blinding flash of light hit her eyes and she winced. She'd become so accustomed to the gloom that she hadn't realised quite how dark it actually was. Bracing herself she looked over to the light and watched, in astonishment, as an anomaly flickered into existence. A moment later an old man, using a cane to walk, came tottering out of it. 

He looked over at the cage, tilted his head when he saw Abby, and then carried on towards the exit. Abby frowned, something about the man sparking a flare of recognition. 

“Hey!” Abby said, flinching when the predator nearest to her startled. “Hey, you can't just leave me here!”

The man paused and turned around. “Really? I think I can.” Then he smiled, a haunted look that Abby would never forget flittering across his face, and left her alone. With only the future predators for company.


	10. Chapter 10

**Thames House, London/Outside the AAU, Russia**

“We need to talk,” Harry Pearce was saying. “It's about the situation back here.”

“Yes, yes, we know,” Cutter interrupted. “You need to find a way to get her back.” 

“Her?” Harry asked. 

“Yes, of course her. Abby.” 

“Abby Maitland. One of their team,” Ruth helpfully supplied. 

“Why don't we start from the beginning?” Lucas suggested. 

The ARC team were huddled around their phones, still on the plane which had only just set down in a secluded area of the forest, not far from where they believed the Russian's had their hideout. In Thames House Ruth Evershed, Harry Pearce and Lorraine Wickes were seated around the conference room table. 

“A woman called Christine Johnson has taken over operations at the ARC,” Harry Pearce informed them. There was a stunned silence as everyone in Russia took a moment for that to sink in.

“How?” asked Stephen. 

“There were soldiers. With guns. But they had some sort of documentation that Lester said made it okay,” Lorraine said. She would never forget the look of utter defeat on Lester's face at that moment. “He said we had to go along with it. And then he managed to get me out so I could come here.”

“Miss Wickes very helpfully supplied us with some interesting information about Ms Johnson,” Harry added. 

“She works closely with the MoD, doesn't she?” Jenny asked, her brow puckered as she tried to remember why the name was so familiar. 

“She worked in the Science Division mostly,” Becker said. He shrugged as they all turned towards him. “Our paths crossed occasionally. She's as ruthless as a raptor.”

“Just what we need,” Stephen muttered under his breath. 

“It seems she's been blackmailing Lester for some months now,” Ruth said. “He's been trying to hold her off but she's been making some compelling arguments for why the ARC needs new management. Not to mention,” she added in a quiet tone, “she appears to have inside knowledge of the ARC.”

“You mean she's been spying on us?” Becker asked, looking outraged. It was, after all, his responsibility to make sure things like that didn't happen. 

“So it would seem,” Harry said. “Her reports contain rather a lot of detail for someone just trying to make trouble. She seems to have gone to a lot of effort to take control of the ARC.”

“Yes,” Cutter said, clearly annoyed. “But why? What can she possibly gain by this?”

“The ARC operation is pretty coveted,” Jenny responded. She was staring off into the distance and the others could almost see an idea forming behind her eyes. “And since the General Election she's gained even more power in the new government. She did very well by the Prime Minister's death.”

The others exchanged concerned glances. However indirectly, the ARC was still part of the reason the country had a new government in the first place.

“But what about Abby?” Connor asked. “All this business with this Johnson woman isn't going to get Abby back, is it? And if she won't do anything...” Connor trailed off, not sure what he was going to say. He just knew that Abby needed him and he wasn't going to be there for her. 

“We'll do what we can,” Harry assured him. “From what I understand Johnson isn't at the ARC yet. I'll have my people track down her whereabouts. We'll also send a team to the ARC, see if we can get some answers that way.”

“Meanwhile we'll continue as planned,” Lucas said, over Connor's objections which were muted by Jenny's hand over his mouth. 

“Very well,” Harry replied. “You deal with Russia and we'll handle the ARC. And remember, all of you, stay safe.”

**The Midlands**

“Danny, you need to put your weapon down,” Donovan was saying. He was carefully not pointing his own weapon at the other man, but he was confident that he was a much better, and faster, shot than the ex-policeman. 

“Sorry, mate, not till we get some answers. Unless you want to work for this woman?”

Donovan grimaced. “Whether I do or not...”

“Will someone please just shoot him?” Christine Johnson asked. Nobody moved. 

“She's the one that sent us here.” 

Everyone turned to the doorway where the injured female soldier they'd spotted before was now leaning up against the wall. Her leg was bandaged, already red with blood and her face was covered in sweat but she looked determined to say her piece no matter what.

“Did she, indeed?” Danny asked and even Donovan looked interested now. “What exactly did you do?”

“Say another world and you'll regret it,” Christine Johnson said. But they could all see that it was an idle threat. 

“She wanted us to open an anomaly, she called it. She said there'd be a reward for us when we got through. But there were these...dinosaurs,” she spat the word as if she couldn't believe it, despite the fact that one was still in the room with them, silently watching them all, “and they attacked. No money in the world is worth this.”

“Where does the anomaly lead?” Sarah asked, the first words she'd spoken in what seemed like a lifetime. She was terribly worried about Abby and had the unnerving feeling that Abby was in a lot more trouble than they realised. 

“I don't...” Christine started to say, but Danny jerked her wrist back – not enough to do any serious damage, but enough for her to know that he wasn't afraid of using a little force if necessary. Abby had gone missing on his watch, it was his responsibility to get her back. 

“It goes to a routing post,” Christine said through clenched teeth. “Where there are many other anomalies. There weren’t supposed to be any dinosaurs coming through.”

Danny took in a deep breath. “Like a spaghetti junction of anomalies?” he asked after a moment. 

“I suppose that's an inelegant way of putting it. Yes.”

Danny ignored her and turned to look at Sarah who was nodding at him, her own expression thoughtful. They'd both read the team's early reports and Connor's name for the routing post as Christine called it had stuck. And they both knew what it meant. 

That Abby could be anywhere, at any time. 

“This is going to be even harder than I thought,” Danny muttered. 

**The ARC**

Lester had allowed himself to be escorted from the gym and moved back to the atrium. He had assumed it was so that he could be questioned but he was just left in a corner as precious seconds ticked on by. 

Lester couldn't understand. Christine Johnson was a disarmingly practical woman and she liked to show that she was in charge. The fact that she still wasn’t here was starting to worry him. He’d much rather face her down than her soldiers, who were looking more and more jumpy with each passing moment. 

He decided that skulking away was beneath him and that surely Lorraine had made it to Thames House by now. Which meant that plans were afoot, and he was not about to sit around and wait for rescue. 

“You, boy!” Lester called to the nearest soldier, raising an imperious hand. 

The soldier, who looked even younger than Becker, flushed and stared over at Lester before glancing quickly at another soldier standing by the far wall. 

“Yes, you, come here.” 

The young soldier gulped and slowly walked over to Lester. When nothing untoward happened he stood up a little straighter. 

“Yes...sir?” he added, almost as an after thought. Lester looked down his nose at him and the boy's shoulders slumped a little. “Did you need something, sir?”

“I wish to speak Ms Johnson.”

“I - “ The boy looked around him but nobody seemed to be paying any attention. “I don't think that's going to be possible, sir. She's not, she's not reported in for a while.”

Lester's mouth pursed. This was certainly strange news. “And she was supposed to?”

“Yes, sir, as soon as she'd secured the Warehouse site...” He trailed off at Lester's startled jerk and moved his arm as if he could physically take back what he had said. 

“Warehouse?” Lester whispered harshly, careful not to draw any undue attention to their conversation. “She's responsible for that anomaly?”

“I, well, I don't know _specifics_ , er, sir.” The boy was becoming even more flustered and Lester decided to play the only ace up his sleeve. 

“I am a close personal friend of the Prime Minister. And the only reason that I've allowed this travesty to continue is because I was under the impression that Ms Johnson had official sanction for her actions.” He gritted his teeth and the boy took a step back. “But if she is responsible for this morning's anomaly, than I doubt very much that the PM is going to be sympathetic to her cause. Nor to armed soldiers taking over a government facility. This is England, not the Middle East.”

The boy visibly paled under Lester's onslaught and started to babble almost before Lester had finished. “She's got all this technology, from the future, like me, and she's working with someone and they're going to change the past and take over the ARC and there's this man, this man who...”

And suddenly, as Lester was just beginning to get his mind around what he was being told, a gunshot rang out and the boy fell to the floor, dead, with his blood coating Lester's shocked face. 

**The AAU**

“You're sure it's this way,” Stephen Hart asked. Anatoly merely paused to glare back at him and then continued down the maze of metallic corridors, leading further away from where he really wanted to be. But there was something so intriguing about this man's tale that he couldn't not help him. He'd known, after all, that things were not right at the facility, but he'd continually shaken off the feeling. Torture wasn't a word he'd ever used in regards to what they were doing to the Test Subjects but he could see it that way now, could see the horror in the creature's eyes and cursed himself for ever having been a part of it.

But now, this was his moment for redemption. He felt the idea curling free from his gut, his limbs loosening from their usual tension, his brain free finally, of the spell that had seemed to descend on him. It was no magic though, not like that of his grandmother's time, but arrogance, plain and simple. His own and the Professor's. 

There was a sudden click of footsteps and before he knew it Anatoly was pushed up against a dark recess in the wall, Stephen's hands over his mouth. 

Anatoly's eyes grew wide but he remained silent, just about able to peer around Stephen's form as it moulded itself to him. There should be no one down here. The guards stayed at their posts and didn't stray down into the corridors, not unless they were changing shifts, which shouldn’t be happening for another few hours. 

Stephen removed his hands and pushed Anatoly even further back until they were both hidden in the shadows, Anatoly's heart thumping so loudly that he knew the predator, wherever it was hiding, could see it as bright as day. 

He put his own hand over his mouth when he saw the figure moving down the corridor though, swallowing his sharp intake of breath. The man before them was elderly, walking with a silver tipped cane, his body bent slightly, but his steps confident, if not a little arrogant. 

Once he was well out of sight, and far from Stephen's sensitive hearing, Anatoly could breathe again. 

“Do you know who that was?” Stephen asked, eyes glinting even in the gloom. There was an expression on his face that Anatoly hoped never to see again on another humans face. 

“Yes,” he said, breathlessly, “that was Professor Ivanov. The head of this facility.”

Stephen's expression changed, again, and Anatoly thought he recognised the first hints of despair upon it. 

“Do you, do you know who that is?” Anatoly asked, unsure why he was the framing the question in such a way. 

“Yes,” Stephen said. He turned back to look down the corridor where the professor had disappeared even though it was impossible to see anything now but the encroaching shadows. 

“Who – who is he?” Anatoly asked, tentatively, suddenly very afraid of the answer though he couldn't quite put his finger on why. 

“His name is Banyon. He's my Maker.”


	11. Chapter 11

Lester very calmly removed a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the blood from his face and then folded the bloodied fabric and placed it neatly on to the nearest desk. He stared down his nose at the dead soldier at his feet and then across at the man who had shot him, raising an imperious eyebrow. 

“And who may you be?”

“Captain Wilder,” the man said. “I'm in charge.”

“And is this how you usually maintain discipline or are you following _Ms_ Johnson's orders?”

If Lester wasn't very much mistaken, Wilder flushed at Lester's tone before putting his weapon away. The other soldiers in the room were all standing on alert, but none of them had raised any objections or alarm at their commanding office shooting one of their own. Say want you want about Christine, Lester thought to himself, but she certainly instilled those below her with an impressive degree of obedience.

“It doesn't matter,” Wilder said. “He's not from around here.”

Lester frowned and was about to ask the obvious question when Wilder saved him the trouble. 

“Very few of them are real boys or girls.” 

Lester turned around on the spot then, his eyes focusing on all of the soldiers. They looked perfectly ordinary, perfectly nondescript, exactly as a good soldier ought. His eyes met Wilder's as he stopped. 

“Clones? Of course. How long have you known about the anomalies?”

Wilder's lips upturned in an almost smile. “Long enough.”

“That's not an answer.”

Wilder shrugged. “Something's gone wrong. Ms Johnson should be here by now. That was the plan.”

“And what exactly were you going to do here?”

Wilder regarded Lester for a moment. “She was opening an anomaly, the same one she's always opened. She's been visiting the future. Putting things in motion.”

Lester's blood ran cold. This all seemed horribly familiar. “Putting what in motion?”

“She wants to be the next Prime Minister. Or President. Or anything that will give her the most power, unlimited control of the anomalies and their endless possibilities.”

“And how does the ARC, right here, right now, play into her grubby little hands?”

Wilder motioned to two soldiers behind him that were assembling some sort of machine in the spot where the ADD was normally kept. Lester had no idea what it was. 

“The anomalies are all linked. Corridors through time.” Lester gave a perfunctory nod, but he was only half-listening, moving instead to stand closer to the dead soldier on the floor. “One was to open at the warehouse. A team was to go through and secure it, followed by the extraction team. They would head to the Russian anomaly, remove all the data about the future they've been collecting and then destroy the facility.” 

Lester winced. “Destroy it?”

“It's served its purpose. They'll return through this anomaly, and the ARC will be at the centre of everything.”

Lester leaned down towards the dead soldier. “And this poor boy, just one of the unfortunate casualties of Christine's mad scheme?” he sneered. 

Wilder looked down at the boy impassively. “Just as you are,” he said, “though I have strict orders not to have you killed just yet.”

“How reassuring,” Lester drawled as Wilder started to turn away, Lester already dismissed in his mind. So he had his back to Lester as Lester pocketed the soldier's gun.

**The AAU – Russia**

“Your maker?” Anatoly asked. “What does that mean?”

“The experiments,” Stephen whispered, though it was if he was talking to himself. “The experiments, here and now, the ones that you’ve been doing. It was him. He was refining what he was doing in the future. They thought,” he laughed, a hollow sound that made the hairs on the back of Anatoly's arms stand on end, “they thought it was his wife who was the real power but always, always it was him, pulling the strings. We're all just his puppets you know, as he weaves the future to his own pattern.”

Anatoly frowned and would have moved away from Stephen if the space had been there for him to do so. “I don't understand...”

“He's a genius, did you know that? Not the way that people say it, so offhand, like it's no more rare than rain in England. No, he's the real deal, intelligent beyond everything. It makes him cold. It makes them all cold. The geniuses that pick and prod and tear at flesh.”

“Mr Hart,” Anatoly said, “we need to get moving. If you want to stop this.”

Stephen’s eyes flashed and Anatoly winced; the man before him could never be mistaken as human. 

Stephen stared down the corridor where Banyon had gone and then at Anatoly. “You knew?”

“I – what, no, I -”

“Maybe not specifics, but you knew that this wasn't right. That something about him wasn't right?”

Anatoly swallowed hard before he could speak. “I – I suspected something but not, I never thought. The meetings he had with the Representative from the future, he always had them with her alone. Was there, was there actually a representative?”

Stephen shook his head. “No, I don't imagine there was.”

“So he played me. Played all of us. For what, who is he...” Anatoly stopped. The phone call he'd been attempting to make earlier to the British team came back to him now, echoing down the corridor. When he'd done his research on them he had also learned a lot of information about someone else who was conducting the same sort of investigation. Someone less able to cover her tracks than he had been. “He's working with Christine Johnson.”

Now it was Stephen’s turn to look confused, though Anatoly only had a moment to savour the idea that for once he knew more than the other man. 

“Christine who?”

“Johnson. She works in your...the British government. I used to be FSB. I have contacts that informed me that she was asking about the project, before we had any idea of what the anomalies were. That's how I first discovered we were not the only country with the problem. She had a lot of knowledge about the new government and its science projects. The agent was following her and gathering information and suddenly, as we began to receive more future technology, she also seemed to be in possession of more information.” Anatoly paused, remembering, his voice going quiet. “He was killed before he could tell me much more. I don't think anyone else was assigned to her.”

Stephen frowned. “Then this is far more serious than I thought.”

“Why were you really sent here?” Anatoly asked. 

“To plant a bomb,” Stephen said. Anatoly's eyes widened. “Which I did. Before I let your guards capture me.”

“Then we have to evacuate the building.” Anatoly tried to move past Stephen but Stephen's grip upon his arm was like a vice, refusing to yield. 

“No. The reasons for the AAU's destruction still stand. No one in the present should have this kind of technology. The more that gets destroyed, the better.”

“But there are people here. Innocent people...”

“Innocent?” Stephen snarled. “No. They don't concern me. We need to get back to the anomaly.”

Anatoly tugged uselessly at his arm. “The other Stephen would not sacrifice people like this.”

Stephen's face morphed into a hideous sneer. “No, I'm sure he wouldn't.” He whistled and a future predator appeared next to him. “Don't make this any more difficult than it already is, _Doctor._ ”

Anatoly knew he had no choice so he nodded and slowly Stephen released his grip on Anatoly's arm. Anatoly rubbed at it, sure that if he survived this day there would be deep finger shaped grooves marring his skin. 

Not that he believed it would matter, he thought to himself, as he began to lead the way to the future anomaly once again. There was no way he was going to be allowed to survive. 

**Somewhere in the AAU**

Abby settled closer to the bars of the cage. The air was starting to get cooler, something she imagined had to do with the anomaly that was still open in front of her. Thankfully nothing else had come through, other than that man. 

“Who was he?” she muttered to herself. She _knew_ that she had seen him before. Seen him quite recently in fact. But where?

She was momentarily distracted when one of the future predators sidled up her. She froze, heart pounding, which she knew was exactly the opposite of what she wanted to happen but there really was no hope for it, and oh god she was going to die...

...but after a few moments it became evident that the predator was just sharing its body heat with her. Two others did the same until she was feeling much better physically, if not mentally. She even found the strength to gently pat the arm of one. It felt warm to the touch. 

“That's odd,” she murmured to herself. “They shouldn't be giving off heat like that at all.”

Before she had time to ponder what that meant though, she heard voices out in the corridor. 

“It's this way,” an accented voice said. 

“Wait,” another voice replied. “Are there predators down here?”

“No, there shouldn’t be. Why?”

“I can sense them,” the other voice said. 

Abby leapt up. “Stephen? Stephen is that you?”

Two men entered the room. 

“S-stephen?” Abby asked again, more hesitantly this time. The man who looked like Stephen stepped closer to the cage and all the predators laid down, their heads resting on their front legs like dogs waiting for a treat from their master. “Not Stephen?” she whispered. 

The man tilted his head and Abby could see it more clearly now, the puckered greyness of his face, where predator met human. The one eye that didn't look quite right, darker and blanker than a human eye. This was the Stephen that could have been, that they came too close to having. 

“She's one of the Others?” the man asked, turning his head.

“Yes,” said Anatoly, who'd been hanging back by the door, eyes darting between the cage and the anomaly. Everything he thought he knew was a lie. It was taking a little getting used to. “Her name is Abigail Maitland,” he added. 

“Abby,” Abby said, softly, “my name is Abby.”

The man nodded. “Stephen.”

“In your time, we didn't meet?”

Stephen shook his head. “Helen plucked me out of the university to experiment on me.” Abby gasped and took an involuntary step backwards. “She took me to the future. I thought she was showing me the world.” He shook his head and Abby could see it then, the hurt bristling underneath his wounds. He'd become a hollow man, just like Stephen would have been if he hadn't had them. If he'd been left all alone.

“I'm sorry,” Abby said. 

Stephen shrugged. “Is he happy? The other me?”

Abby swallowed the impulsive need to reply straight away, she wanted to give the question due thought. “Yes,” she said finally, “I think he is.”

“Good.” He looked at the predators and then at the cage. “So lets get you out of here and get you back where you're supposed to be.” 

**Warehouse, The Midlands**

“This is a travesty. Against the Geneva Convention!” Christine Johnson was shouting. Everyone was ignoring her. 

She was currently trussed up like a turkey, her legs and hands tied together and made to sit on the floor which, she had already pointed out, was probably covered in dinosaur faeces. No one had seemed to take that into consideration either. 

“I still can't get hold of anyone at the ARC,” Sarah said. She approached the small conference that Danny and Donovan were having. “What next?”

Donovan shook his head. “We don't know how to open the anomalies, and if what Walters has told us is true, then the equipment Johnson had to open it is damaged beyond repair. I don't see what else we can do here.”

Danny kicked absently at the ground. As much as he hated to admit it, Donovan was right. Abby was gone and there was no way of getting her back. 

The three of them stayed silent for a beat. Then the Triceratops shifted its feet. 

“And what about that?” Sarah asked. 

Danny turned to look at it. “Take it back to the ARC?”

“But we can't tell them we're coming,” Sarah pointed out. “They won't be ready for a _dinosaur._ ”

“No,” Danny started to say, “no, they won't, will they?”

Sarah wasn't sure what the look on Danny's face meant. She was just very glad it wasn't directed at her.

**Outside The AAU**

Connor was sitting, bundled up under so many layers than he'd lost count. It wasn't quite Siberia but it was bad enough. He was looking around him in muted wonder. It didn’t really feel right, being here without Abby. He hadn't liked it before and he certainly didn't like it now. Knowing that Abby was trapped somewhere, that she needed him and he wasn't able to help. He'd been through that once and that had been hard enough. This, this was so much worse.

“Abby's a tough cookie,” Stephen said, sitting down next to Connor. “She can look after herself pretty well.” He patted Connor on the arm. “She saved me, after all, didn't she?”

Connor looked up at Stephen, and nodded. “I guess you're right.”

“Everybody ready?” Jenny asked. She patted her gloved hands together and stomped her feet. 

“Yeah, we're good,” Stephen said. He stood up and helped Connor to his feet. 

They turned to see Lucas and Becker, with their guns ready and the team of ARC soldiers behind them. Their faces were deadly serious and they were whispering together, a hushed monotone from which the others were excluded. 

Cutter glared at them as he passed and went to stand next to Jenny. “What do you think they're talking about?”

“I'm sure it's nothing we need to worry about,” Jenny said. Cutter shot her an incredulous look.

“Are you ready?” Becker asked. 

“What were you talking about with Lucas?” Cutter asked instead of answering Becker's question. 

Becker schooled his face into as nonchalant expression as he could. “Just finalising a few details. Connor, here's your laptop. We have twenty minutes to move around to the anomaly. Do you need any more time than that?”

“No, that's fine. It ought to take only a few minutes to create a false anomaly alarm. Then Lucas' team can get themselves captured. Then we can go check out the real anomaly. It'll be just like taking out the Death Star.”

“Star Wars,” Stephen mouthed over Connor's head at Jenny's puzzled expression. 

“Oh, right, good,” she said. 

Becker turned and gave Lucas an assessing look before turning back to his team. “I've plotted the quickest route, we can follow these pipes the whole way round.”

“What do we think is in them?” Cutter asked. 

“Water infiltration system, I think,” Connor said, his fingers flying across his keyboard. “Nothing dangerous, or anything.”

Cutter nodded. “Let's just hope you don't end up eating those words.”

Connor bit his bottom lip and stared at the plans again. “Nope, definitely water.” 

“Come on then,” Stephen said, stepping aside so that Becker could take point, “the sooner we do this, the sooner we get to go home.”

Cutter fervently prayed it would be that simple.


	12. Chapter 12

Danny, Sarah and Lt. Donovan were in the cab of a truck they'd borrowed from a local farmer, the Triceratops sleeping in the back. The other soldiers were following behind with Christine Johnson, though two had been left behind at the warehouse, on the off chance that the anomaly re-opened. 

“You know, it's not like it's a T-Rex,” Sarah said, “it isn't going to strike any fear.”

Danny looked over at her and raised an eyebrow. 

“You know what I mean,” she said. “We can't make it do what we want.”

“Yeah, I wouldn't be so sure of that. Did you spot it had a radio transmitter, like those future predators?” Sarah nodded, it would be hard to forget her first proper job as a member of the ARC team. “Connor's been working on the signals they use to communicate and open anomalies.”

“Okay,” Sarah said, not quite seeing his point. 

Danny took his hands off the wheel long enough for Donovan to tense beside her. “And,” Danny said, pulling out the hand-held anomaly detector he'd pocketed earlier, “they're all programmed into this.”

Sarah took it from him and breathed a sigh of relief when Danny put his hands back on to the steering wheel. “So you think we can use this to make the Triceratops do what we want?” 

“Worth a shot don't you think?” 

“You're both out of your minds,” Donovan said. They were the first words he'd said since getting into the van, and didn’t exactly instil confidence. 

“I think it's as good a plan as any,” Sarah said. She shot Donovan an annoyed look. Suddenly he wasn't looking as attractive as she'd thought. 

“Great,” Danny said with a grin, “then hop to it Dr Page. We'll be in London before you know it.”

**The AAU**

This other Stephen, this stranger, approached Abby and she tried to school her expression into something neutral, something not horrified. She was fairly certain that she failed spectacularly. But it was so _strange_ seeing Stephen like that. So haunted. Her Stephen was coming to terms with what had happened to him, was part of the team again, trusted and trusting. She doubted very much whether this Stephen had been granted the same opportunities. 

“I don't need your pity,” Stephen said and Abby flushed guilty. 

“Sorry,” she said. Stephen merely shook his head. And then, with a nod at one of the predators, he motioned for her to step away from the lock. 

She did so, carefully stepping over the other predators who were still lying down. At Stephen's nod one of them swiped the lock with its claw and then pulled back, hissing in pain. Automatically Abby moved towards it, and gently cradled its injured claw in her hand. 

“It look like it's been electrocuted,” she said, amazed. She looked up to see that Stephen was looking at her strangely. 

“You really care about these creatures, don't you?”

Abby shrugged. “Of course. All of us at the ARC do,” she added, eyes slanting towards where Anatoly, who she'd learned was in charge of the Russian experiments, was stiffly standing in the shadows.

Stephen's answering smile was brittle. “Good to know.”

“Shouldn't we be getting out of here?” Anatoly finally said. “Before the bomb goes off.”

“Bomb?” Abby repeated in alarm.

“Don’t worry about it,” Stephen told her, which only made her worry more. But before she could ask any more questions he was turning towards Anatoly who took a step backwards at the look of fury on Stephen's face. “Why is this cage door electrified?”

Abby looked cautiously around her, one of the predator's claws still held in her hands. Gently she released it and tried to look reassuringly at the creature. 

Anatoly was shrugging. “I didn't even know this was here. I didn't think – anomalies aren't supposed to be able to open here. There's a forcefield...”

“I disabled the inner ones,” Stephen said, interrupting Anatoly. “All this is happening because I was sent here. By Banyon and his wife.”

“Banyon?” Abby asked. 

“He passed through here a little while ago, you must have seen him?”

Abby nodded. But something was niggling at the back of her mind again. Whoever he was, his name wasn't Banyon. But if he was from the future how could she...

“Oh my god,” Abby said. “Oh my god.” She grabbed hold of one of the bars of the cage, afraid that her knees might give way if she didn’t have something solid to help her stay up.

Stephen and Anatoly turned towards her, as did the future predators. 

“Abby?” Stephen said. “What is it?”

“I know why I recognised him now. That man you called Banyon, he's from the future, isn't he?”

“Yes,” Stephen said. “But you've seen him before, how?”

“He's been at the ARC,” Abby said. “That's Dr Jin. He's the ARC psychologist.” 

Abby had only seem him briefly a few times, which is why it had taken so long for her to recognise him, and now that she thought about it, he had made sure to keep out of everybody's way. Except Stephen’s. Stephen he had spent a lot of time with. Now she could see the reason why, he was standing right in front of her. Looking horrified. 

**The ARC**

Lester bristled as Wilder lead him into the animal containment area but he said nothing. He kept up his silence while Wilder told one of his apparently trusted soldiers to stay outside and make sure that Lester behaved, and he merely pursed his lips when Wilder made a crack about the sabretooth in its cage being a good companion. 

Once Wilder had left and the guard had looked in on him once, Lester moved swiftly over to the computer console to the left of the room. He was grateful, once again, that MI5 were now involved with ARC operations (not that he would ever let them know he felt that way), because it meant an added layer of security to the computer systems. Coupled with Lucas' paranoia and Connor's expertise it meant all he had to do was input a series of commands and...

“Bingo,” Lester smirked. He was now back in control of the ARC systems. They may have been able to take over the main computers upstairs but these ones were on a different server, and apparently Connor hadn't got around to updating the schematics of the building yet. Lester's smirk turned into a large smile. If he was going down, he was taking as many people as possible with him. 

“Mr Lester?” a voice whispered. Lester immediately jumped and reached for his gun.

“Show yourself!” he hissed. 

A scientist that Lester vaguely recognised as working on the anomaly locking device with Connor, crawled out of an air vent near the floor. She glanced around and then hunkered down behind the bench so that even if the guard did look in, he wouldn't be able to see her.

“How on earth...?” Lester began but the scientist interrupted him. 

“I was looking for Nancy,” she explained. Lester heard a squeak and saw that one of the Diictodons that Connor and Abby had rescued recently was sitting behind the scientist, striking up as innocent a pose as he supposed she was capable of. He sighed as the scientist continued, “and so I was sort of, out of sight, see, when they were looking?” Lester nodded. “And I've been working my way through the air vents, but then I saw they'd taken you in here so I thought I'd...help?”

Lester chanced a glance at the guard outside the room, but he was looking out towards the corridor and not inside, for which Lester was immensely grateful. He was just going to ask her what help she thought she could provide when her next words stopped him cold. 

“And when Dr Jin opened that anomaly...”

“What?” Lester asked, a slow rumble of fury building in his chest. “How -”

“He did something to one of the devices Connor's been working on. I couldn’t see clearly but he could use it to open an anomaly and he just stepped through! As if he'd done it hundreds of times before.”

Lester stared down at her as if she'd grown another head. “He just stepped through?” he repeated. The woman nodded, but Lester wasn't really talking to her. “And he had one of Connor's devices.”

“Oh,” the scientist said after a moment. As the ARC psychologist Dr Jin was not permitted in any of the science labs, merely his own office, the gym and the kitchen. He shouldn’t have had any access to ARC equipment. 

“No wonder Connor's locking device didn't work,” Lester was saying to himself. “It was sabotaged.” He slammed his hand down on to the counter and then tried to look composed as the guard peered in. “Abby could have been killed,” he said once the guard turned back around. “Any of them could have been...”

“What should we do?”

Lester looked down at her. “It's Dr Gordon, isn't it?”

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “Nicola Gordon.” 

“Next we contact Thames House. I'm sure they're already working on something, but they need to know about this.” He shook his head and turned back to the computer. “None of this is at it seems.”

**Thames House**

Harry was sitting at his desk, reading the file that Ruth and Lorraine had compiled on Christine Johnson. It made for some interesting, and alarming, reading. On the surface her activities would appear merely as those of a sycophant eager to gain power and someone who the newly elected Prime Ministers relied on perhaps a soupçon too much. And yet, and yet... Harry shook his head. It seemed the PM had a penchant for pornography of a dubious legality. And Ms Johnson hadn't been above seeing that he got a regular supply. In return she'd had almost unrestricted access to the ARC's database. Almost because Lester had the sense to make sure not everything was recorded for government posterity. 

Which is why she'd started blackmailing him when she realised certain vital pieces of information were missing. Harry smiled. At least Lester had led a fairly blameless life and her attempts had merely focused on threats to the main ARC team and threats of disbanding them all together. Which Lester, in his pigheaded fashion, had attempted to deflect on his own. 

Ruth and Lorraine were standing anxiously in front of his desk, but Harry kept reading, ignoring them for the moment. Because once you added in the existence of the anomalies her frequent trips to remote areas of the country – caught on CCTV, and thank god for Big Brother, Harry murmured under his breath – it became quite clear that she was in possession of some extraordinary technology. 

“We don't know how she got it, but it appears she can open anomalies at will,” Ruth said, rightly interpreting where in the document Harry had read up to. 

He nodded. “No one she's met seemed out of the ordinary?”

“Tariq's running background checks right now, seeing if anything raises a red flag.”

There was a knock at the door and Tariq peered his head around. “And I think I've found something. You're all going to want to see this.” 

They all trailed out to Tariq's desk and stood around his computer. 

“These are a series of shots from CCTV at St Pancras. I had to use the facial recognition program plus a few other tricks to align these up.” Tariq sounded quite smug so Harry merely glared at him and he coughed and got back down to business. “Yes, well, this is Johnson meeting with the same man. Different times, different days, but same place.”

Harry moved closer to the screen. “Do we know who that man is?”

“It's Dr Jin!” Lorraine said. She looked at the others in surprise. “But he's, he's the ARC psychologist. Lester hired him so that Stephen could go to someone with full clearance and who'd be on the scene in case anyone else needed him.” She shrugged. “He's always seemed pleasant enough when we've bumped into each other in the kitchen. Keeps himself to himself really.”

Harry turned to Ruth. “And what do we know about him?”

Ruth sat down at the console next to Tariq and began puling up information. “Hmm,” she said, “his original background check passed with flying colours. Degrees, work experience, all look like they're in perfect order. In fact, everything looks perfect.” She looked up at Harry and they exchanged significant glances. 

“I don't,” Lorraine began, “I don't see the problem. If it's perfect then...”

“ _Nobody_ has a perfect background. Not a real one anyway.”

Lorraine's face fell. “You mean he's a spy?”

Ruth shrugged. “Not one of ours, maybe the sister service?” 

Lorraine's brow furrowed. “The what?”

“MI6,” Harry explained. “I'll give them a call. Ruth -”

“I'll make some calls too,” she said with a nod, already reaching for a phone. 

“You too Tariq,” Harry said. “Let's find out exactly who this Dr Jin is working for, shall we?” 

**Outside the AAU – Team Alpha**

Lucas North hunkered down behind some army trucks. They were as close as they dared get to the compound's front entrance. He made sure that his weapon by his ankle was secure and loaded, and then checked the gun that he would allow the guards to find and take. 

He looked back over his shoulder to the ARC guards. They weren’t exactly the best he'd ever worked with, but they seemed competent enough and Becker had assured him, in whispered undertones, that he'd picked the ones less likely to fire on their own side. 

Somehow Lucas had not found this as reassuring as Becker had appeared to mean it.

“Ready?” he asked them. They nodded. At least they looked the part, Lucas mused. He turned back to stare at the entrance. So far everything was going as planned. 

He hated it when that happened. It meant the problems were still to come. 

He pulled out his phone and dialled Connor's number. “Ten minutes,” was all he said before hanging up. 

Something wasn't right. They should have been spotted by now. Their security hadn't seemed this ineffective from the air...

Lucas frowned. Maybe that was the point. 

“Stay here,” he instructed the soldiers. Then he started to slink forward, his arm outstretched in front of him. After about thirty seconds his arm hit something, although he couldn't see anything in his way. He made a fist and hit the air in front of him. His hand bounced off as if hitting a glass wall. He rubbed his hand and cursed. Time to think of a Plan B.

**Outside the AAU – Team Beta**

“That was Lucas?” Jenny asked. She stomped her feet on the ground and pulled her scarf closer around her neck. Cutter pressed a little closer to her, trying to share body heat, and Connor and Stephen tried to keep from smiling too obviously. 

“Yeah. He said ten minutes.”

“Will you need that long?” Cutter asked. 

“Nope,” Connor replied. “It's all ready to go now.”

Stephen moved a little away from the group. He wasn't having as hard a time as the others with the weather, in fact he was starting to acclimatise to the conditions, something he tried hard not to worry about. Dr Jin had told him that was perfectly normal, that the human and predator sides of him were coalescing, that there was nothing to worry about. He'd seemed quite interested in the subject and mentioned a background in biology was the reason Lester had hired him in the first place. Stephen had to admit, although the man was very hard to read, being able to talk to him about all his fears had given him a renewed sense of purpose. Not just in what they were doing at the ARC but in his friends too. 

He turned to look back at them and smiled. Stubborn as Cutter could be, he was still the best friend that Stephen had ever had. In her own twisted way Helen had brought them back together and he had to remain a little thankful to her for that. 

He took a deep breath, his lungs filling up with cool air and then closed his eyes. He'd been working on some things back in England, techniques that Dr Jin said would help him concentrate his powers. Now was as good a time as any to see if he was right.

The first thing he felt was a throbbing pain in his head. But Jin had said that would abate with concentration, and Stephen found that to be true. After a moment he could wrap the pain in cotton wool and push it to one side. Instead he reached out and he could feel them then, the creatures, their hearts beating softly, the sound like mist to his senses. He couldn't have explained it to the others but that's what it was like. Like hearing mist. 

“Stephen?” Cutter asked. “What are you -?”

“Concentrating,” Stephen interrupted in a whisper, waving his hand for silence. He felt Cutter step forward and place a hand on the small of his back, but otherwise he didn’t say anything. He could feel the others looking at him, but he didn't open his eyes. 

There were dozens of them, all over the compound. Though the highest concentration seemed to be at the door closest to where they were now, which lead directly to the anomaly that they could see sparkling in the distance, disappearing and reappearing without setting off their hand-held detector. Connor was busy trying to work out why that was, but Stephen had other things to worry about. 

“Can you tell anything?” Cutter asked after a moment, not able to keep quiet. Stephen merely hummed non-committally. He could sense one predator on its own and it seemed like it was...waiting, waiting for instructions. 

“I don't know,” Stephen said eventually. He opened his eyes. “I can sense lots of them but...”

“Er, guys? I think we've got a problem.”

“What is it Connor?” Jenny asked. 

For an answer Connor stood up, picked up a ball of snow, and threw it past Stephen. It didn't have to travel far before it hit something in mid-air. Something invisible. 

Cutter's jaw dropped. “A forcefield?” he asked, words feeling unfamiliar in his mouth. 

Connor nodded. “That's my guess. Would explain why the satellite image we saw was so strange. And why our detector's not picking up the anomaly.”

“So,” Jenny asked, “what do we do now?”

Before any of them could make a suggestion the door nearest to them in the compound was opening. 

“Get down!” Stephen hissed, pushing Cutter to the floor. Jenny and Becker grabbed Connor and they all flattened themselves to the ground, unmindful of the cold snow. 

A future predator peered its head around the corner and then sniffed. They all held their breath as it turned to stare directly at where Stephen was lying. 

“Damn it,” Stephen muttered. 

“Can you -?” Cutter asked but Stephen was already shaking his head before the question was fully formed. They all braced themselves for an attack, but instead the creature lay down and three figures appeared in the doorway, their body's merely silhouettes thanks to the light pouring out from inside. Then the door was closed with a quiet snick and the ARC team could see one person they didn't recognise, and two they did.


	13. Chapter 13

**The ARC**

Lester was shooting off an email to Thames House, detailing what he suspected was going on when the fire alarm went off. He looked up, startled. The guard outside was shouting something and Lester hurriedly motioned for Dr Gordon to get back inside the air vent when the whole building shook as if something had slammed into it. 

“What is it?” Gordon asked but Lester just shook his head. 

“I have no idea.” He pulled her to her feet. “Perhaps the air vent isn't the best place for you right now.”

Lester moved towards the door and opened it. The soldier that had been guarding it was nowhere to be seen. 

“Come along,” he told Dr Gordon, grabbing her free hand, the other being occupied with keeping Nancy still; it was apparent that she wasn't going to let the Diictodon get loose again.

They hurried down the corridor towards the atrium and Lester made Dr Gordon hunch to one side as he peered through the doors. The scene was one of utter chaos, thanks to a Triceratops in the middle of the room. Soldiers were lying on the floor, their hands behind their heads, except for Wilder, who appeared to be the Triceratops' first victim. Lester noted with some relief that he appeared to be breathing however; he certainly had some questions to answer.

And then Lester spotted, standing by a large hole in the wall as if he owned the place, Danny Quinn. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to smile, or remind Danny of the penalties for damaging government property. 

He settled on the second option. 

“You just can't do anything quietly, can you, Mr Quinn?” he asked, stepping into the room, with Dr Gordon following closely. 

Danny offered Lester a wide grin. “And where would be the fun in that?”

“The repairs are coming out of your wages.”

Danny barked a laugh. “As you wish. Oh, we've er, got a present for you.”

Lester raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Danny stepped aside to allow Lt Donovan to bring Christine Johnson into the room. She still had her hands tied in front of her, but her legs were free, allowing her to walk unaided, though Donovan was keeping a tight grip on one of her arms. Her hair was a mess, her clothing dishevelled, and if looks could kill Lester would be a heap upon the ground. Lester smiled. 

“Ms Johnson. A pleasure, as always.”

“This isn't over,” Johnson spat. “You have no idea what you're dealing with.”

Lester rolled his eyes. “I think we've all had more than enough dramatics for one day. I'm sure our colleagues at MI5 have a few questions they'd like to ask, and you know how much they hate being stonewalled.”

Lester had to give her credit, she hardly blanched at all. With a disdainful sneer he turned around and started heading towards his office – he still had many things to do, not least of which was check and see how operations were going in Russia. But Christine's next words stopped him cold. 

“None of this is going to matter. Not when you’re removed from history. When all of you are.”

Lester very slowly turned around. “And how exactly do you plan to do that?”

Christine attempted to shrug and pulled her arm away from Lt Donovan. “I'm not going to do anything. The plan's already in motion. Why don't you ask your Russian friends. If you can get hold of them.”

“What have you done?” Danny asked, shaking her. She merely glared at him and kicked him in the shin. He moved away and growled, but he wasn't about to hit a woman, no matter how aggravating she was. Sarah, on the other hand, felt no such compunction and stood nose to nose with Christine. 

“Tell us what we want to know and we'll make this easy for you.”

Christine snorted. “You think that I'm scared of a little wisp of a girl like you?”

Sarah’s reply was to grab Christine's arm in a Chinese burn. Christine yelped and Sarah applied more pressure, much to Danny's amusement. 

“All right, all right,” Christine shouted, hissing out a breath of relief when Sarah released her. 

“Well?” Sarah snapped. 

Christine looked around the room but there was absolutely no one there that would help her. “I don't know specifics,” she said, “but my contact - “

“Dr Jin?” Lester interrupted. 

Sarah and Danny looked surprised, but Christine looked worried. 

“How did you...?” she started to ask, then thought better of it. “Yes, he's been helping me. Feeding me information. He's going to change things so that I'm in charge of the ARC.” She held her head up and Sarah fought down the urge to smack the smug look off her face. 

“People have _died_ because of you,” Sarah said. “Can't you understand how wrong this is?”

Christine looked down her nose at Sarah. “When history’s been changed they won't have died, so it won't really matter, will it?”

Sarah threw up her hands in disgust and moved away from the other woman, towards Lester. Lester was furiously thinking, and absently pulling at his tie. 

“How could he have done this?” Lester asked, and looked around at the others, genuinely asking for input. “ _Why_ would he have done this. To infiltrate the ARC, set all these plans in motion.”

“You don't think he's just Johnson's number one fan then?” Danny asked. 

Lester barely shook his head. “Today,” he said, turning to Christine, “the warehouse, what was the plan?” 

Johnson looked a little unsure now. “We've been going through at regular intervals for weeks now. Gathering future technology, items that Jin said would be helpful in the time change. Normally you don't detect it. I don't know what happened today.”

“How has he been keeping the anomalies secret?” Lt Donovan asked. 

Johnson shrugged. “I never asked.”

“How did you even meet him?” Sarah asked. “Where's he from...” She stopped as the obvious answer sprung to her mind. “Oh, he must be from the future.” She turned to Danny who nodded, it certainly would make sense. 

“So something was different about today,” Lester repeated to himself, almost as if he wasn't listening to the others. “What could Jin be doing. If he has access to future technology what would he want from here. What...”

“Stephen,” Sarah said, in a hushed tone. The others turned to look at her. “It's all about Stephen. That's what he was really after. Access to Stephen.”

“And I gave it to him,” Lester said. Then he turned around and pushed over the nearest desk before slamming his hand against the wall. “Dammit, I gave it to him.”

**Outside the AAU**

“Abby!” Connor shouted. He jumped up from his prone position and ran towards her, only to smack straight into the forcefield. 

“Connor, get back!” Becker yelled. He grabbed the younger man and pushed him behind himself, taking on a defensive position in front of the others. 

“Connor?” Abby said excitedly. She moved close to the team but stopped short of trying to reach out to them. “Are you – are you all all right?”

Connor nodded enthusiastically. “We're fine. But you – how did you get here?”

“Through an anomaly,” Abby said. “I'm not quite sure what's going on though...” She looked over at the other Stephen who was staring at _her_ Stephen, seemingly not able to take his eyes away. 

“What have they done to you?” the ARC Stephen asked. He was staring at the other Stephen's face, remembering his own web of fine scars on his back, the only visible reminder of what had been done to him. “Are you – are you a clone?”

“No,” the other man said. “I'm from a different time line entirely. It intersected at a different place when Banyon, when he pulled me out of a situation I'd got myself into.” He shook his head. “It's not important.”

“What, what can we do to help?” Cutter asked. Both Stephens looked at him, surprised. “Surely, there's something. These Russian experiments, what can we – and who's Banyon?” Cutter's thoughts were coming out too fast for him to make them into proper sentences but the others all understood, they felt the same way. Just because he wasn't their Stephen, didn't mean they wouldn't do all they could for him. 

He looked at them strangely, as if he'd never had a kind word directed at himself before. Abby stepped a little closer to him, wanting to be reassuring. 

“This is all very heart-warming,” the man behind Abby and the other Stephen said, in a heavily accented voice, “but there is still a small matter of a bomb in the building.”

“A bomb?” Becker asked. “When's it going to go off?”

“You don't have to worry,” the other Stephen said. “I have one of my creatures next to the detonator. It won't go off until I want it to.” He turned back around to Anatoly. “But it _will_ go off.”

Anatoly nodded, slowly. “Then let me set off the evacuation alarm. There are many people in there. People with families who had no idea of what was being done. Please.”

The other Stephen nodded, once, and Anatoly raced off, back into the building. It didn’t take long for an alarm to sound and then there was a quiet swooshing sound and the forcefield around the compound was gone. 

Abby immediately ran into Connor's arms and Jenny stepped closer to them too, half-hugging them both. “We're so glad you’re okay,” she whispered to Abby and Abby beamed at them all. 

The two Stephens meanwhile, were still staring at each other. 

“Who's Banyon?” Stephen asked his double after a moment. “Did he do this to you?”

“Yes. Him and his wife. They're...they _were_ trying to create a super race, I think. I was their most successful prototype. I can control the Echolocators as easily as breathing. The others always had trouble.”

“And he's just been plucking...us... out of different time lines.”

The other Stephen nodded. 

“That's barbaric,” Cutter said. 

“He couldn't have done it without your wife's help.”

Cutter took a step back, as if he'd been slapped. 

“I take it you and Helen weren't involved then,” Stephen said, shooting Cutter an apologetic look. 

The other Stephen looked scandalised. “You and that witch...?”

“Stephen, there's something else you should know,” Abby said, disentangling herself from Connor. “This Banyon...” She paused, hating to be the one to cause Stephen any more pain. “He's been posing as Dr Jin.”

There was a stunned silence. 

“How is that possible?” Becker asked. “He would have had full security clearance...” he trailed off, the implications too enormous for him to contemplate. 

“I thought he was helping me,” Stephen said softly. “I told him, I told him so many things that I didn't, that I couldn’t tell...” He looked over at Cutter, helpless. Cutter moved forward quickly, grabbing onto Stephen’s arms. 

“It's okay, Stephen, it's all right, whatever he wanted, whatever his plan was -”

“He was planning on changing history,” the other Stephen interrupted. “He's already started on it. I think he thought that if he could make all these changes in the past, the future would be his to do with his as he wants. With his trusted Echolocators controlled by their Alphas.” Here he pointed at himself. “We'd make a pretty good invasion force, don't you think?” he added bitterly.

“Oh Stephen,” Jenny said, not sure which one she felt the most for. 

“And Jin, Banyon, whatever his name is. He's inside the building?” Stephen asked. 

“Not any more,” Becker said. 

They all looked up to see a man running from the door and heading across the snow and towards the anomaly. The anomaly itself could be reached by a steel walkway that Becker had inspected briefly earlier – though he hadn't got close enough to it to realise it had been protected by a forcefield at the time. 

“No,” the other Stephen said, “I’m not letting him go back.” 

And then he was off, running as fast as he could, one of the future predators bounding at his side. 

“Wait!!” Stephen shouted, and with a quick glance back at his companions, he was chasing after them. 

“Oh god,” Connor muttered, “this isn't good. What do we do?”

Cutter didn’t wait for any suggestions, pushing past Becker's futile attempt to keep him there, and gave chase. 

It was hard work, over the snow, and Cutter found his breathing more laboured than he would have liked. Stephen's suggestion that he spend some more hours in the gym was suddenly not looking as ridiculous as it had done at the time. But he pushed all thoughts of that aside. He wasn't going to lose Stephen. Not again. 

“Stephen! Wait!” he shouted, then decided conserving his energy was a better use of his time. 

He reached the walkway and began climbing up the steps to it, just in time to see Banyon and the other Stephen disappear through the anomaly. 

“Stephen!” he shouted. He hauled himself up and saw Stephen at the other end of the walkway, looking down at the anomaly. “Stephen, come on, just, step away....”

Stephen turned around and Cutter stopped in his tracks. 

“Do you trust me?” he asked. 

Cutter's shoulders slumped. “Stephen...”

“Do you trust me, Nick?”

Cutter closed his eyes for a brief moment and then opened them, blinking rapidly. “Of course, I trust you, Stephen. But...”

“I have to see for myself, don't you get that? However much it pains me to say it, I was born again in the future. And there’s so much that I don't know, that I don't understand about myself now. Jin might have been a lying bastard, but he did help in a way, because he _knew_ me, what I was going through. He'd helped others go through the same thing, in his own sick, twisted way and if I ever catch up with him I’ll...” He stopped and wiped at his face, vaguely aware that it was wet. “I need to do this.”

Cutter stared at him, arms useless at his sides. He wanted to grab Stephen, to shake sense into him, but part of him could see that Stephen needed to do this for his sanity, as much as anything else. He needed to learn about this other part to himself, before he could truly reconnect to his humanity. 

And Cutter hated his wife in that moment more than he ever had before. 

“Just come back,” he said, instead of all the other things he wanted to say.

“I will,” Stephen promised. And then he stepped off the edge. 

**Outside the AAU – Alpha team**

Lucas looked up in surprise as an alarm inside the compound began blaring and streams of people began pouring out. Some of them were armed, but most of them looked like regular scientists. Some of them were wearing winter weather gear, but the rest seemed like they were poorly prepared to be outside in such temperatures. 

“Get back to the plane,” Lucas told one of the soldiers, “see if we've got some supplies for them. We won't be able to help them all but...” He trailed off as one explosion inside the compound was followed by another. 

“Damn it,” he yelled, “get the first aid kits. I'm going to find the others.”

He raced off in the direction the other team had gone, his mind reeling. He had no doubt that they were involved somehow, trouble seemed to have an unnerving habit of following them around. 

He pulled out his gun, wary of anything or anyone he might encounter out here. He only hoped that whatever test subjects the Russians were experimenting on they were well locked up or dead. They might be essentially in the middle of nowhere, but he'd read up on those future predators and he knew they had tremendous speed. It wouldn’t take very long at all for them to encounter a populated area. 

His thoughts were already ambling ahead of him so he almost smacked right into Becker, who was leading a motley procession back towards their airplane. 

“Becker – are you all right?” he asked. He put his gun away when he saw that the others all seemed unhurt. Another explosion rocked the air and they all winced. “What's happening?”

“Long story,” Becker said. “We found Abby.”

“So I see,” Lucas said, looking between Abby and Jenny in surprise. Considering they'd been reunited with their team mate, none of them looked very happy. And then he realised that they were missing one. “Where's Stephen?”

“He's gone,” Cutter said. 

“Gone? Is he - “ Lucas motioned towards the fire lit building next to them. 

“No,” Cutter said, shaking his head. “He went through an anomaly.”

Lucas' brow furrowed. “The one to the future?”

The others nodded as one. Lucas took a deep breath, he could see that he wasn't going to get any sense out of them until they got into the warm; they'd all been working on adrenaline alone for too long now. 

“He had something he needed to do,” Cutter added in explanation. He favoured Jenny a small smile as she took his hand and squeezed it, though he could barely feel it through his thick gloves. “But he'll be back soon.”

“And what are we supposed to do?” Connor asked, wiping at his red nose with the back of his hand. 

“We go home,” Cutter said, moving to the front of their little group, Jenny's hand still grasped in his own. “We go home.”


End file.
